Star Wars Episode III: The Forgotten
by WhiteFangofWar
Summary: Barely three weeks after the events of Episode 3, Darth Vader is assigned his first true trial as a Sith Lord: a battle against a cabal of fallen Jedi powerful enough to threaten even the Empire! This story is now completed. Review if you read, please.
1. Prologue

_Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here are SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. Spoilers for it, as well._

_-_

STAR WARS: The Forgotten

>

Prologue-Coruscant, Imperial Palace, Year 001 BoE (Birth of Empire)

When the man had first seen the light of the Galaxy's capital as a child, they had seemed immense, gilded, and mammoth beyond reasoning. _Thegold lining of a heaven where angels dwelled. Where my angel once dwelled._

Now he knew better. Living twelve years on the planet's industrialized, multileveled surface had accustomed him to the omnipresent glow of the city; it did not seem at all overwhelming now, even from the breathtaking view that readily offered itself from the palace.

The Sith Lord, barely three weeks old, did not have time to entertain the city lights, the weak, artificial things made to fend off the darkness, that couldn't even accomplish that successfully when night fell. _No, banishing the darkness is an impossibility for all beings, Anakin Skywalker included._

The Imperial Palace, accordingly, was not very well-lit at all. Only two beings occupied the room, the very heart of the galaxy's authority. Neither of these two had much of a need for it- what need for eyes had they? Only the light from the city intruded upon the seat of power, reflecting off black, polished armor to illuminate the Sith. The light could do nothing to reveal the features of the other, _the master_.

Instead, Lord Vader _felt_ his master's presence and heard his ghostly voice echo from the throne twisted as usual by the snarl in Palatine's demeanor. "Welcome, my young apprentice... I have decided upon your next task."

_Another task. A trial. A new mission, and one step closer to achieving the mastery of the Dark SideI need. Good._"What is thy bidding then, my master?"

The master's features could be seen only via a slender beam of neon once he stood, his features appearing weathered and ghoulish from his prior encounter with the damnable Jedi Master Windu. Mottled skin, yellow eyes that peered out of dark caves… but Vader knew firsthand just how misleading his master's appearance was.

There was not a single being left in this galaxy with the power to oppose him now, and the chance of that changing soon were very slim indeed.

_But it **will** change in time_, Vader mused_, once I am ready. For now, my master's teachings are invaluable. _

Without having to make another movement, the master conjured a pale blue image that floated before them both. Not a physical image, but one of numbers and text, coding accompanied by three-dimensional displays.

It only took Vader a beat to recognize a handful of Jedi names mentioned in the text.

"The data archives of the Jedi Temple", he observed uncaringly.

"Yes", the master hissed sinuously. "The last remaining copy, hidden in our new Empire's data net. No one else will ever see this brought to light."

A searing flame of annoyance ignited in Vader's heart, and he directed it to the task of forging the core of absolute rage that was his greatest weapon. "There is… something amiss on this list?"

Free Translation: "Get to the point." The master coughed, still not fully recovered from his fracas with Master Yoda. "Indeed. More than one- they have shut off the temple gathering signal we broadcasted at the end of the war, encrypted it so we may not use it again. Some Jedi have escaped our trap."

He felt comprehension, suddenly becoming more interest in the once-meaningless array of names and locations contained by the image. A spectacular hunt for the last of Jedi, then, including… _including_…

"But for now, there is nothing we can do", the master continued. "In time, we _will_ seek them out. They cannot run from us for long- it is not in their nature. However, this text mentions another group which must be destroyed soon, Lord Vader."

No longer interested in the data, he fed another spark of annoyance to his great and mighty furnace. "No 'group' is a true threat to us, master- not without the dark side of the Force at their call. The Clone Troopers may handle _that_."

Now it was the master's turn to get angry. He waved a clawed hand swiftly to change the image, simultaneously exerting a slow, but utterly irresistible pressure on the mechanics that now bolstered Vader's largeframe. Over the audible crack of plasteel, he snarled. "I did not say they were not Jedi. In a way, they are more dangerous to us than the Jedi Council could ever be. I have _given_ you a task, Lord Vader, and I expect it to be done. Obey."

Falling back from the pain, Vader shook off the cracking until it stopped, trying with all his will to inject absolute servitude into his tone. "Yes, my master. _Who_ are they?"

Going back to an expression of sick joviality, the master tightened his gaze. "Being from a Jedi background, you may know them as the Forgotten Ones."

Vader's helm rose from his kneeling state. "I have no knowledge of such Jedi."

The master smiled contemptuously. "Of course, the Jedi would attempt to keep their shame a secret to all. Twenty Jedi over the course of three thousand years, all of whom left the Order willingly. My former apprentice was one of them."

Vader nodded, restraining his own instinctive contempt for both the Order and the man known both as Count Dooku _and _Darth Tyranus. The man who was now dead.

"Aside from the late Lord Tyranus", the master said, "there are five other Forgotten Jedi that currently remain alive somewhere in _my_ galaxy. I have dispatched my spies to every remote corner, every hidden sanctuary available to them. We have a new enemy."

At this point, the master looked as if he were about to stop, but then held Vader's gaze after sensing a resurging arrogance in his apprentice. "Do not underestimate them. My spies did not find the Forgotten. Instead, they found a unisignal code not unlike the one denied to us at the Temple. This code is meant to signal a _gathering_."

He repeated the hand wave, changing the image to a planet Vader did not recognize, a vast blue marble with thin trails of white lacing it's exterior. Padme would have found it beautiful.

"The Forgotten have contacted each other with this", the master explained, sneering at the conspiracy he had only now learned of. "In three months, these five fools plan to gather in a secret council at Raltiir, and combine their power to oppose us. This _cannot be allowed to happen_."

Raltiir vanished before Vader's black metal visage just as quickly. He pressed on. "What must I do?"

Pleased by his newfound enthusiasm, the master smiled darkly. "Their signal was broadcast to five separate frequencies, five worlds where they have found refuge after their expulsion from the Order. You will go to each of these planets… and strike each of them down, one by one. It is safer that way. You may take whatever men and materiel you feel is necessary to accomplish your trial, Lord Vader."

For the first time in many hours, Vader felt warm, fiery blood surging in his veins against the machine parts. A new challenge. A new opportunity to test the murky ocean of power he had only just placed a toe into. _And, a worthy task that will take my mind away from the pain of loss._

"As you wish… my master."

>

The old, battered Jedi Starfighter would never serve his purposes for any number of reasons. Anakin Skywalker had flown the tiny craft in dozens of engagements during the Clone Wars, but the ship simply would not do.

For one thing, it was too small. The augmenting black armor he had worn from birth- the armor that still felt clumsy and dead to him- made his already muscular frame too large for an average starfighter. The ship was missing its counterpart astromech. It didn't have the storage capacity for the complex package of data his master had given him.

All that, and more- he wanted nothing to do with a _Jedi Starfighter. _It was a relic from the faded past, and it would not do to go hunting the Forgotten in _that_.

So, fates- and more likely, Vader's ever reliable master- had conspired to create something more to his liking. It stood on the landing platform of the palace, still fresh out of Kuat Drive Yards. The craft gleamed in the morning sun, the glossy metal coating giving its gray hull a shimmer that belied its purpose.

Two large engines nestled in spikes extending outward from the ball cockpit's single seat, paralleled by two more spikes bent back at a horizontal plane that contained the weapons. The prow of the custom-designedship jutted forward as a silver dagger, making it far longer than it was wide.

The banishment of Anakin Skywalker could not dim a natural born mechanic's aptitude, nor a pilots'. A little bit of both still resided in Vader, and he felt the left engine spike over with his right glove for weaknesses.

He found none. As usual, the absurdly wealthy aristocracy of Kuat Drive Yardshad turned out a flawless piece of work- not a weld or bolt out of place. _Without a true weakness- it is what I wish to be. No… what I **will** be, once I have mastered the Dark Side. The power of Darth Plageius in the palm of my hand!_

Facing a nervous techno, he ordered the _Shadow Hunter_ to be prepped for immediate launch- it was all he would want or need for his trial.

>

M: This is kind of short, I know, but the first real Chapter will be up in two days maximum. Oh, and tell me if I spelled Plageius wrong.


	2. Jedi Hunter

Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. Only the Forgotten Ones are OCs so far.

>

_Jedi Hunter_

_>_

The _Shadow Hunter _was as fast as it was sleek and deadly, but no amount of Hyperdrive power could defy the inevitable stretch of lag time spent traveling between locations. Vader's closest destination was still hundreds of parsecs from Coruscant, giving him plenty of time to sit in the void of Hyperspace, utterly alone.

It had given him time to think, for his consciousness to catch up to the exploits and tribulations of a numbed, ravaged body, eyes closed behind the black helmet. No amount of reflecting could change the truth of the matter.

_Padme is gone._ _After Mustafar, the world I knew burned down around me. I can't breathe. I cannot **live** without this armor, and is that truly living? _

Jedi or Sith, honesty with oneself remained important. Perhaps, _especially_, if you were Sith. The shell of unfeeling metal that the droids had woven around him still seemed uncomfortable, heavy. The prospect of wearing it forever still terrified him beyond imagining.

_I will not, then_, he stiffened up, focusing on the future to dampen the horrors of his present. _The power that I began learning to save her- it can also save **me**. Someday I **will** be free of this mask, and then I will possess the power to make the galaxy whatever I wish. _

Of course, Vader knew the person behind his present circumstances, the mental image undimmed by his daydreaming. _This is all the fault of Obi-Wan. Everything leading to this nightmare could have been avoided if he had not betrayed me. If the Jedi had not betrayed me._

Again, his unrestrained anger flowed out, causing the ship to rock slightly even while in motion… but he reined it in before anything crucial was broken. _That is another area I must train in if I am to succeed- I must learn to conserve the rage for the proper moment, as my Master has done._

If there was any part of the master's power that impressed Vader, it was that. It hadn't taken long after the incident for him to deduce that the former Supreme Chancellor must have been planning the current state of affairs- the war, the clones, _everything_- before coming into office; perhaps _much_ longer. Yet, Vader had already sensed a wrathful, destructive vengeance in the master whenever his true power came to the forefront. His master bore an unmistakably bloody grudge against the Jedi Order that coaxed simple anger and hate into an art form when he chose to use it.

To keep all of that hidden away, completely concealed under the well-mannered, even _meek_ role of Senator Palpatine, for over twelve years… _That_ was the zenith of self-control if Vader had ever seen it. No doubt that his master possessed greater control over his emotions than even his vanquished Jedi tutors had. Greater power, as well. _There has to be a connection._

That was to be the first step, then; to refine the blazing furnace of anger in his gut so it would only burn when necessary. Here when he needed it; gone when he did not.

The first step would have to wait- Chorax was down to five light-minutes and counting. Triggered by the early warning alarm, the holo-display to Vader's immediate left lit up, creating an image of the planet in question. Details on the Forgotten that was supposed to be living on this dusty hideaway popped up alongside the display, accompanied by the text of his master's own notes- a succinct evaluation of the man Vader had to kill.

_Forgotten Jedi- Kahl Gonak, Human Male from Contruum:_

'_In many ways, Kahl Gonak is the perfect exemplar of the Forgotten, and why it is that we must eliminate them swiftly. This young man left the Jedi at the same time you were made a Padawan, shucking off the hypocritical Jedi Code for his own liberation. His power to draw upon the Force is not as dangerous as it is exotic- the smugglers who used this planet as a sanctuary have talked. They say he draws upon this planet's own energies to fight. Earthquakes, rock and mud slides, floods… all will answer to his call. Gonak **must** be killed, before his talents can harness the energies of an entire galaxy of natural disaster out there waiting for him.' –Master Sidious_

_>_

The planet Chorax, from what the _Shadow Hunter_'s almanac data suggested, had long-since become a victim of its own success. An unremarkable hunk of dust and rock, it still bore the scars of its collision with a meteor millennia ago- the surface was crisscrossed with craggy impact lines. These kilometer-deep valleys had been the perfect hiding spots for any given number of the galaxy's lower functionaries… especially considering it was practically the next-door neighbor to Thyferra, the home of all Bacta in existence, making for an easy smash-and-grab.

Such lowlife scum had a way of talking about their adventures, Vader knew, that had eventually dulled the planet's only viable function- a secret hideout was useless when it wasn't secret anymore. Before long, various rumors about the Polith system getaway were thick enough that any legal inquiry in the system would inevitably begin there. Now, most sensible smugglers stayed well enough away from the place.

_A case of being too perfect. Still, this Kahl Gonak hasn't moved out along the rest of his smuggler friends. He is hiding in plain sight. He thinks that no one would ever come to this mudball with the power of the Force behind them._

Vader's respirator muffled a light puff of air out, momentarily opaqueing the view screen. _He is about to receive a rude awakening. _

The _Shadow Hunter _was barely halfway through the cloud layer when it picked up other engine signatures lighting up on the ground. Vader stared at the screen's four blue ion flares- and the small ships they represented- with quiet indifference. Obviously, the mountainous planet was not entirely dead. _Shadow Hunter's _computer counted off the patchwork rigs, two of which were already on an intercept course with him.

Vader ignored the rest of the smuggler ships for the time being, instead pushing a fraction of his shields and communications energy into acceleration and weapons.

Directly through a pearl-white cloud bank, and there they were. Two vessels approached Vader's ship head on flying side by side, their pilots either idiots or madmen.

_Or,_ Vader supposed,_ perhaps they do not yet know whom it is they face. _

The two vessels drew closer, providing an odd contrast in size. The left ship was only an old starfighter- a junky Hornet Interceptor, by the looks of it, but the strange Courier ship on the right nearly dwarfed Vader's own. While the first ship aped the thorax, eyes, and gossamer wings of hornets that were endemic to any number of worlds, its multisectioned partner held a large wing on its port bigger than the rest of the ship put together, and an angled row of three engines along its right. Without these two modular sections chained to it, the vessel would have been only slightly larger than a starfigthter as well.

The two ships hadn't fired yet, but Vader knew their intent was to stop him- why else would they fly directly towards him, acting as wingmen should? Mechanical hands descending to the fire-control buttons for the first time, he locked and launched two concussion missiles from _Shadow Hunter_'s horizontal spikes against the larger ship, and then sent a pair of thick green lasers lancing downward at the Hornet through the clouds.

Once the Hornet was destroyed, the Courier ship gave off a series of small pops from its bow that were the only indication of it's having launched chaff to confuse the missiles. Both were foiled by this, veering off to crash into random space debris that not even Vader's powerful sensors could make out yet, but the second explosion still crisped its rear plating.

Concentrating in earnest now, he drilled the ship's gargantuan left wing with lasers, punching through it… but the vessel remained sturdily in one piece, and now it could shoot back.

The same moment the Courier was able to track and fire with its own weaponry, Vader hauled the flight controls hard, sending _Shadow Hunter _into a velocity-enhancing spin to knock away any of the countless pink spheres the ship's Pulse Cannon might tag him with. The needle spin only quickened the rate at which the two ships passed each other by. Just as the enemy ship and its tiny pulse shots passed out of sight, _Shadow Hunter_ trembled from a good handful of red laser hits to the rear shields.

_That vessel must have rotating blasters_, he decided firmly. _No matter- this rebel pilot's tenacity will be his undoing. _Hauling the controls the other way to kill the spin, he shook off the last of it cornering around to face the target again. _It was folly to try and speed up this meaningless conflict. _While he hadn't sensed any strong Force presences aboard the courier ship, he hadn't found any on the planet yet either- the vessel might well be Kahl Gonak's own.

Instead of shying away from the head-to-head exchange as he had done previously, Vader reduced thrust, depressing his targeting reticule onto the ship's main section as it forced a sharp turn of its own.

Not fast enough- the next barrage of green struck the engines on the right instead, the row of pods acting as a weak shield for the ship as it completed its elongated turn.

The ship and its deceased wing mate had remained silent thus far, but Vader recognized irritation and a fair bit of youth faintly coming over his communications, broadcasting from a site on the surface. "_Rancor Eater_, this is Gonak", came the annoyed voice. "You need to break off now, before he vapes you. Didn't I tell you not to intervene with this Sith Lord?"

The ship Vader now knew to be the _Rancor Eater_ completed the turn even while its captain added his gruff voice to the mix. "No can do, Kahl. He's killed Grigsby. He dies. End of story."

Behind his mask, he narrowed his eyes. Idiotic of them to broadcast in the clear like this, even if it really didn't make a difference- _Shadow Hunter_'s decrypt package was top of the line.

"Damnit Poc, just go! I _told _you I can handle him!" That was Gonak's nattering voice, again. "Just fly away with the others- I want to be alone for this one."

Gonak had just saved him the trouble of having to interrogate the enemy crew once they were helpless, but obviously the gruff captain hadn't gotten the message. Of course, that didn't really matter in the end. The captain of this ship had challenged the Lord of the Sith; Only one ship could survive this encounter

Vader snapped off another sequence of shots, drawing close enough to strike individual parts milliseconds after he'd targeted them. Instead of retorting with another pulse barrage or its rotating blasters, which he could now see clearly on the main wing, the _Rancor Eater _dove for one of the meandering valleys Chorax was known for, trailing another cloud of charred debris and plating- its own.

_No_, he gripped the fire controls with hands of durasteel, _you shall not escape me. _The other ship still occasionally harassed his shields with the rotating turrets now as he duplicated the dive into the valley, but all parties involved knew the ship was partly crippled, no longer able to mount any kind of real defense except for running into the valleys.

It actually took three full salvos, two short periods of pacing the target while waiting for the heavy blasters to recharge, before the structural welds connecting the ship's three modules gave out completely. Even then, its main section continued downward, trailing smoke before tumbling, slamming into a sheer cliffside.

>

Barren as the areas above Chorax's valleys were, it was no surprise that any visual readings _Shadow Hunter _would able to get of the target was interrupted by rocks and dirt- the whole surface area was the nothing but rocks and dirt, the spot where Gonak's transmission had come from no exception.

Stalking along the rough ground between natural edifices, Vader had never intended to blast Kahl Gonak on the ground from behind his ship's shielding. That was the coward's way, the way the smugglers he had just killed might have done it.

Wherever Gonak was, he _would_ find him, and defeat him in a straight battle, as it should be. The archive data indicated he had built a Lightsaber before renouncing the temple, and he eagerly anticipated the moment when that perfectly balanced green blade would clash with the red Sith Lightsaber Vader had built himself in the past week. He'd had no choice.

_I had to, because Obi-Wan stole my old one, stole it away and left me helpless, to die the most painful death imaginable. Betrayal. _More anger came with those thoughts, and more power along with it.

That power was answered by the weapon he'd been searching for, along with the man he'd been searching for, as both stepped out from the shadows behind a tall spire of rock.

Kahl easily fit his voice. Whereas he had left the Jedi temple at the tender age of fourteen, he was now a man of twenty six, thick brown hair that must have been handsome a while back molded into a messy mop over Kahl Gonak's strangely meaty face. Vader would have expected to see such a mug on the departed captain of the _Rancor Eater_, not on a young renegade Jedi. Beneath that, Kahl confined himself to a simple leather flight jacket and black pants, again looking more like a hotshot mercenary than a Jedi.

Instinctively, Vader matched a sideways pacing to Gonak's own, passing through the obstacle course of rock spires without a pause. His target drew his saber, and Vader did likewise..

"So you killed him", Gonak spat, matching his earlier transmission with the bitter accusation. "I saw you. Poc surrendered, and you _still _shot him down. No honor amongst murderers, I see."

"He challenged me", Vader rumbled back as though that would explain everything. "He could not be allowed to live."

Gonak twitched, now gathering a noticeable reserve of dark side power to him. "Damn show-off, thought he could keep you away from me. You're the Sith Lord Darth Vader, if I'm not mistaken."

For a beat, Vader froze. Someone had tipped Gonak- and possibly the rest of his allies as well- to his coming. Who? This mission was meant to be a secret, with only few others knowing of it…

"You would be correct, young Gonak", he replied darkly. "Now, face me with all of your hatred and might- I promise I shall make your destruction painless."

Vader felt more of the Force gathering in the other man. "So you say. But just because you got lucky against some hoary old smugglers doesn't mean a thing against me."

"In my experience", Vader answered in infinitely precise tones, "there _is _no such thing as luck."

Gonak's brow furrowed like a storm cloud. "We'll find out." He lunged, whipping out his emerald green blade that closed in on its mark before crashing against Vader's red saber, already in a strong parrying position.

Surging forward, Vader pressed the parry into a strong side slash away from Gonak's own guard, cutting the air inches from his face before he came back with a flashy spin, not quite knocking the blood red blade away from him, but giving pause to Vader's advance. Just as quickly, he retreated from it, back flipping onto a rock that put him a full head taller than the Sith Lord.

Gonak didn't wait on his perch. His own saber darted down towards Vader's neck, taking advantage of the high ground, but Vader kept coming, shrugging the ineffectual attacks aside and putting his muscle into a backhand counter directed at Gonak's waist. Like the last one, the blow seemed to miss at the last second, as though the fallen Jedi's body was elastic.

By stretching out with his senses, Vader could now sense the anomaly. There was something amiss about the way his blows continued to miss no matter how well he targeted them. Gonak had some experience as saber duelist, but not nearly as much as his assassin had accrued over the years. By all rights, he should have been minced a minute in; instead, Gonak was drawing him out, provoking him into a tiring prolonged exchange even though he knew himself to be at a disadvantage.

_Enough of this waste of time_. As Gonak dodged backwards yet again, Vader let his saber guard fall and concentrated. The monstrous rage poured out at Gonak, immediately causing him to relax his own weapon and fight the power that threatened to choke the life out of him.

Gonak was not the only one having trouble controlling himself- Vader's bloodshot, organic eyes swam with the images that had fueled his power. Sandpeople, worthless occupants of a planet just as barren as this one… His mother's body, cradled in his arms… and Obi Wan, still ever the preacher, screaming down at him from his safe spot on a hill of black ash instead of helping him, watching him burst into flames…

'_You were supposed to bring balance to the Force, not turn it to darkness!'_

Suddenly, Kahl Gonak looked very much like one of the Sandpeople, choking and coughing behind its mask. Vader drifted for a moment and turned him into Obi Wan, advancing while Kenobi's eyes widened and his throat contracted. Finally, there was little left to come out- Vader was momentarily spent.

And Gonak was still standing. Even while resisting the Force choke with all his power, he'd still somehow avoided the saber lunge. Just for a moment, Vader let his heightened senses drop… and discovered something on the lenses of his helmet that even the Force had not shown him.

Until now, he had not paid any attention to the dirt under Gonak's boot soles. Why would he? Dirt was dirt, useless to either combatant, or so he had thought. The pickups in his helmet offered every detail of its movement, the ground shifting beneath Gonak's feet…

And each shift exactly in time with Vader's slashes, as though his blade was a metronome.

_So this planet is **literally** his ally. But the Dark Side is stronger than a mere planet. It is the other half of the Force that spans millions of mud balls like this one. All that is required is to draw out that energy, and Gonak will prove no match._

Thinking this was one thing. Doing it was another, even for a Sith Lord. Already, Gonak was dodging Vader's blow again, coming back with his own saber with a renewed vigor Vader could not help but feel jealous of.

Jealous, and frustrated. _Before the incident, I could do cartwheels over this little whelp's head. With this blasted suit, I can't jump at all. _

Finally, just when he thought Gonak would never tire, he caught an opening in the young Jedi's guard. Breaking his maxim of aggressive pressure attacks, he managed to move both bulky legs to the left of the green saber so that he was no longer between it and one of the tall rocks they had been fighting near.

The rock did not last long- barely a second was required for the intense heat of Gonak's saber to burn through the rock spire but that second was all Vader needed. He swept his blade around the left, coming within inches of Gonak's neck before something else blunted it.

Remembering that he was still exposed to a reprisal, he dropped back a bit out of alarm. But no- Gonak's speed had kept him alive at the cost of his saber, moving it back by reflex to block Vader's weapon with the handle. The weapon now lay in two pieces on the ground, revealing a rare Corusca Gem imbedded within the tube.

He didn't need to look at Gonak's face to tell he was furious at losing his weapon- a weapon that had been by his side for twelve years. Vader sensed a strengthening aura of pure rage around Gonak now, and prepared his own saber for the final blow before that aura could do anything more.

The ground beneath Gonak's feet reacted so abruptly that Vader didn't understand what he was seeing until a few seconds after the fact- not only did the ground whisk Gonak's shaking form out of harm's way, but it also shook beneath Vader's glossy black boot soles, treating Gonak and himself like a pair of opposed superconductors.

The shabby rock spires around them began to fall apart, further distancing the two combatants with a choking cloud of dust. A fraction of the grit caught in the speaker grille of the helmet, but Vader ignored it- a small earthquake was no place to get distracted over semantics, and that seemed to be exactly what Kahl Gonak was doing.

Finally, Vader felt Gonak's Force-presence shot upward from the shielding dust cloud, weaponless but suspended on a pillar of rock more than three times the size of anything he'd seen on the planet before. Gonak was standing upright with his fists balled up, his face twisted by the wrathful madness he had sensed earlier.

Gonak was shouting something impossible to hear over the cracking noises that were now coming from the earth beneath Vader's feet. Refusing to stumble, he sidestepped and was immediately thankful he had- Gonak's increasingly wild Force anger had sent an earthquake fault line cracking towards where he had been, and the dry shale crumbled before it like a massive eggshell.

As strange and impressive as he found this power, there was no time for reflection- remembering even through his rage that such a maelstrom would eventually devour itself, Gonak had put his powers to work in raising a circle of tall stalagmites around Vader's figure like a round little cage, ensuring that his next quake line could not possibly miss.

Instead of trying to cut the imposing spikes, which Gonak had no doubt swathed in multiple layers of fast-drying mud from the river to the east, Vader raised his saber to the skies, gathering momentum and plunging it into the earth seconds before the fault line reached him. The beam of red sank halfway in before sticking, and now Vader could see the line stopping, losing the threatening crackling noise that had deafened his helmet's pickups.

In fact, he realized in shock, the quake had gone completely silent. All the rugged rocks and mud Gonak had raised in his tantrum were halted, and he really hadn't expected his saber to stop the fault line either. _Something is amiss here…_

Covered in dirt from the battle, his two optic lenses could still make out what was amiss- Gonak had stopped moving atop the pillar of rock he had created, and another one of his small dust clouds was obscuring any detail of his body, except for the persistent glow of two red beams at the top of the column.

_Red beams coming out of his eyes… is that some sort of Force technique?_

He knew what those red beams were- lightsabers. Two of them, sticking directly through Gonak's pupils in what constituted the most gruesome death Vader had ever seen, with his own scissor-decapitation of Count Dooku striking a close second. _Then there was Master Windu and the younglings- _**_maybe_**_ not the ugliest death I've ever seen, _he corrected himself. **_All_**_ death is ugly, no matter how quick and clean you try to make it._

The being responsible for this particular bit of savagery had not yet show their face from behind Gonak's kneeling corpse on the pillar, still cloaked by the dust storm raging around it. Vader raised his saber again to an en-garde position, wary that the new arrival might well abandon his or her weapons for a chance to surprise-attack the Dark Lord.

_Then_ he felt the being's Force presence in place of Gonak's own, and his eyes prowled the billowing sand clouds even more carefully. "It has been a very long time since we last met." His deep voice called out to the sun-baked sand. "I can see your flare for the dramatic has not yet ceased. Reveal yourself… Asaajj Ventress."

This confirmed what he already knew- no trial proposed by his master would be without its surprises. No one ever told him it would be an easy mission to accept.

Just how he liked it.

>

M: Bah, I was striving for likean hourtrying to find a good wording to end this chapter, whether to reveal the new warrior's identity or not.

(SPOILERS FOR NEXT CHAPPIE)

I double-promise that the next chapter will not have Ventress just leaping in to fight Vader- there was too much continuous fighting in this chapteralready, and she's in for the long haul of this story as an enemy of the remaining four Forgotten, _all _of whom are either equal or greater than Kahl Gonak's level of strength! Next chapter up in about a week.


	3. Always Two

Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. Asaajj Ventress is from the Clone Wars micro series, not my mind.

-

_Always Two_

>

In the time he had spent both fighting and commanding the Clone War that had ravaged the galaxy for two years past, Anakin Skywalker had faced many dangerous opponents- most of them a good stretch older than he was. That the thin-limbed Force-user known as Asaajj Ventress stood out was testimony to how close her deadly technique had come to being the death of him.

As much as he disliked recalling that era, Vader remembered the fight well. As dark side assassin, Ventress was gifted with a supernatural agility exacerbated by her thin frame, and wielded two lightsabers of the same style her former mentor, Count Dooku, had. By linking the two identical weapons together, as she had done while battling Anakin Skywalker, she could create a double-edged saber, which she had proved equally adept with.

Now those two sabers shone through the eyes of Kahl Gonak, their penetration burning progressively wider holes in his handsome face. Asaajj still stood on the rock pillar as if frozen in time, with her curved saber handles positioned at opposite angles to emit their light directly into the rear of the dead Forgotten's skull.

Once the sand cloud had dissipated completely, she reacted to Vader as if just noticing he was there, moving both her sabers out of the corpse and letting it slide off the column and onto Vader's feet like a marionette with its strings cut.

Then Ventress reacted with something approaching delight, although that was an emotion as foreign to her as it was to Vader. "Oh my. It's even worse than I imagined."

As it had done before, Ventress' voice irritated with its broken-glass raspiness, making her sound like a snake with a sore throat. She jumped down from her perch and peered closer at Vader's helmet, completely enjoying the sight of her former rival squeezed into a mechanical suit of misery. "Time has not been kind to you at all, _Skywalker_."

Remembering his training, he crushed the fury that welled up back into his gut and instead spoke calmly, still keeping his saber ready to slice the female Rattatak to pieces at the slightest provocation. "Do not speak that name to me. It tries my patience."

He might as well not have bothered- Ventress had her sabers ready to go as well, and there was no way to hide the labored breathing, the sparks spitting from the left shoulder beneath the black plating- both signs that he had lost a great deal of energy battling Kahl Gonak. Even the Force had limits. _Or rather, this crude matter has limits with regards to drawing upon the Force._

"I do wish I hadn't already taken a job that requires you to stay alive", she said regretfully, still looking and sounding _very_ pleased with herself for having caught Vader in such a position. "Maybe I should just forfeit it and get my revenge anyway- that helmet would make such a fine trophy in my new home."

"You may try", Vader echoed back menacingly. "You will not succeed. And it is pointless for us to settle our grievances now- you are only a nuisance in the way of my true mission."

"Oh, really?" Vader had already left in the direction of the _Shadow Hunter _at a brisk pace, but she intercepted him with no trouble. "I believe it was _I _who killed that young upstart, not you, _Skywalker_. I saved your life."

Under his helmet, he fumed. Ventress had already found a new way to annoy him besides her quavery voice, which always dragged the 'S' of his old name out into a venomous hiss. "Who was it that told you? They are very _unfortunate_ beings… or very stupid."

Ventress didn't flinch. "My anonymous employer. He sent me to save your pathetic behind, and to kill anyone else who might try to kill you."

Vader stopped his advance for just moment, considering. Ventress was brazenly protecting the man she hated- the man who had nearly killed her. _This 'employer' of Ventress' must have promised her a fortune, or something beyond the value of credits to work such a change in her. Who?_

Imperceptibly thanks to his mask, Vader shook his head. "That is none of my concern. I have my own mission- to slay the Forgotten Ones- and I do not care whether you wish to protect me or kill me."

"And you've done such a good job so far", Ventress replied sarcastically, again moving to block his way. "If I'd delayed one more second, you would be buried beneath twenty tons of vicious mud. Of_ mud_, Skywalker. You try to think of a more embarrassing death."

"I could think of one for you if you insist on badgering me", Vader scowled back, regaining some of his former strength via the risk of unbridled hatred. "My stamina is not as easily depleted as the Emperor's- you merely accelerated the process I would have finished."

As if to demonstrate, this time he pushed Ventress roughly aside and strode further towards the boarding ramp of the _Shadow Hunter_. While the tremors had shaken up the surrounding area, the ship's pointed stabilizers had kept it from toppling over. _That _would have just been more embarrassing material with which Ventress could taunt him.

Only the vacuum of space would be able to put the sting of this humiliation behind him, and the trial was just beginning.

>

The trip to the Polith system's primary jump point gave all the time required for Vader's anger to subside to a more manageable level of reason. He had felt the memory of the Force energies involved in his battle on Chorax, and could now privately admit that he had not fared as expected.

This was frustrating, because he also had the memory of the Force surging through his sinews at a far more impressive rate- one that could have destroyed Kahl Gonak without any help. Much of the flesh was no longer there, and the mechanics that had replaced it did not channel the energy nearly as well. It was as though he had been partially stripped of his abilities, and there was no real guarantee how or when he could ever get the power back again.

Thyferra's serene green sphere flew past his main view port, and another thought occurred to Vader. _I was unconscious for a long time after the incident. Why did my master not use Bacta to heal my wounds? I have seen Clone Troopers injured nearly as badly as I was healed back from the brink of death by that liquid. Half the mechanics I have now would not have been needed then._

There was only one probable answer that he could think of- to limit his apprentices' power. Even before he had run into the Chancellor's office before, he had felt Master Windu's power competing with the incredible nova of eclipsing darkness that was his master's energy. While it was true that nova had been greater than Windu's, and Master Yoda's as well, it was still a comprehensible level of power for the Chosen One.

In the aftermath, his Master was _still_ resting, slowly replenishing his strength from two consecutive encounters with Jedi Masters. It would be weeks still, before his powers returned to their peak, that of the carefully stored geyser of unstoppable power he'd killed Windu's allies with, and then fried the Master as well.

But not without difficulty, and not without his apprentice's help.

_So that's it then_, Vader mused bitterly,_ he fitted me with as many mechanics as possible to hamper my powers, out of fear that they would surpass his own, or that I might even try to usurp him while his powers were drained. The Emperor's power is like a loaded dam- unbeatable when unleashed, but once depleted, it takes weeks to build up again. That is why he spends so much time in meditation these days._

Vader's own mediation was disturbed just then, and his tensions with Palpatine were replaced with an ancient Sith curse direct toward Asaajj Ventress- her wearied amusement was close enough so that she had to be in a ship nearby.

Not particularly caring who else heard, Vader punched his comm. and projected pure ire into his voice- if he could have choked Ventress from that distance, he would have done so. "I warned you to stay out of my way. I will not tell you again."

Her response came back to his ship just as quickly, and with no small measure of her own irritation thrown in. "And _I _told _you_ that I've been charged with making sure the Forgotten don't eat you alive, Skywalker. You're getting my protection whether you like it or not."

"Most certainly 'not'. Leave me alone. I do not require your protection to accomplish my trial."

Raspy laughter lit up his instruments, which surprised him- Ventress had never laughed or expressed amusement before now. A childhood on that war-torn inferno called Rattatak brought with it too much trauma for such merriment.

"Get real, Skywalker. _Four _renegade Jedi, each of them as strong as me? I knew you were egotistical when we first met, but you just don't seem to realize how weak you are now, and that will cost us both if you attack another one of the Forgotten without backup!"

_The anonymity of my mask has its benefits_, Lord Vader decided. Less than a handful of living beings would dare speak to him that way even if they didn't know him. Asaajj knew who he really was, _and _was a powerful Dark Jedi in her own right. _And what she offers now has some merit, at least until I adjust to this. Until then, she may actually be stronger._

"Then I will show you that my accident has not weakened me, Ventress. If you wish to serve me so badly, I will send the data for one of the Forgotten Jedi to your ship. You will kill one, and I will kill one, and my task will be completed that much sooner. Agreed?"

He could tell that a protest was on her black lips, but she had also seen enough of Anakin Skywalker to know she wasn't going to get a better offer. "Agreed. Send me the information."

"_And_ you will stop calling me Skywalker from now on."

More raspy hissing that made her sound more like a Barabel. "We shall see. Maybe if you can kill yours before I kill mine."

By uplinking with the source of Ventress' words, _Shadow Hunter _gave its master more information on her spacecraft than it gave away. Confirming his intuition that Ventress had used a snub fighter to sneak onto Chorax, Vader skimmed through the data and returned to the file on his own target.

_Forgotten Jedi, Reyne A'kla, Female Camaasi from Obroa-Skai_

_I have never made much of the Camaasi as a people. The political weapon that is the identity of those who nearly destroyed them before is far more useful than anything these pathetic pacifists are capable of- it keeps the Bothans in check. _

_But this Reyne A'kla may be different. Being born on the library world, her parents raised her not only to add as much knowledge to their genetic memory as she could, but to slowly cultivate her gift with the Force away from the eyes of the Order. In doing so, they planted the seeds of their own destruction in their little girl._

_My spies have failed me in the task of discovering the true depth of Reyne's power- they all returned without even remembering when or why they were there on the colony world of Ichosar. In some cases, they did not even remember who they were before they were punished. Clearly, Reyne's powers have grown since then... Kill her, and quickly._

Now able to see Ventress' fighter retrieved by its drive ring and funneled into the light of hyperspace, Vader sighed in vexation over his mechanical respirator. He had sent Ventress the file on the Forgotten Jedi that was farthest away from the galactic core, practically next door to the Unknown Regions. A Gand Findsman named Zurxix, who had last been sighted near Helska 4 and moving even further out of the galaxy for some reason. Asaajj Ventress would not be bothering him again for at least a week, he was sure of that.

In the meantime, he had a Camaasi woman to hunt down, and less than the aforementioned chunk of time to do it in, if he wanted to prove that the power of the Chosen One had not disappeared along with half his flesh.

_This is a dare that I will win, if only to show that accursed woman how wrong she is._

_>_

His first hint that something was wrong came when Vader saw Ichosar's orbital satellite. Or more precisely, its remains.

Ichosar was not a planet he had ever heard of or traveled to before, but what little information he had gleaned from the holonet indicated that the colony world was known as an attention seeker, if such could be said about the population of a planet.

Being small and out-of-the-way as they came, Ichosar had never been given any representation in the Old Republic and would not carry much power in the new Empire either. The planet was constantly being amended as a sort of add-on nation to its closest neighbor, the more heavily populated- and more beautiful- planet of Chandrila. Chandrila _did_ have a Senator in the Republic, and a popular one at that.

All the same, Ichosar's government had been recorded making greater and greater attempts to draw the Republic's attention to it with elaborate schemes such as this Comstar station to make Ichosar an important communications hub in the galaxy. They had tried again during the Clone Wars by building dozens of grandiose training academies for the Republics' new army, missing the fact that a Clone Army was trained right from birth.

Now the expensive result of one of Ichosar's big publicity stunts had been turned into space junk, and Vader saw no ship nearby that could have done it. The Comstar could have been destroyed days earlier, and no one would have even noticed.

Vader took the _Shadow Hunter _right through the debris cloud, getting closer to the planet's flat green surface. Finding Reyne A'kla at the two cities here would be harder than tracking down a singleton individual on a hideout like Chorax or Helska, and he was fairly certain the Camaasi would not carelessly give away her presence to Vader as young Gonak had done- the records said nothing of her having any experience with a lightsaber or levitation.

Then again, he really didn't know what kind of powers she _did_ have. Being from a race that detested violence, A'kla might well try to cloak her presence as the Emperor had done in the past. _She may hide all she wants, but she will not escape._

A triangle of tall antennae from the planet's main comm. tower reminded him that there were other sources he could access once he landed. "Ichosar Prime, this is Lord Vader of the Galactic Empire coming in for a landing. Do you read me?"

Utter silence over the channel. Not even the noisy crackle of fried radonics that might have resulted from the destruction of the planet's Comstar.

"Ichosar Prime, do you copy? Secure landing pad 12 for my craft. Do you copy?"

_Strange. I can feel people down there, but none of them possess any sort of transmission system. No matter- I will simply land where I wish._

He would have his choice, as well; only a few dirty-looking ships occupied the fifteen pads ringing Ichosar Prime's central spaceport, nothing larger than his own ship. Drawing closer, he could confirm with his eyes what his other senses had already told him- there were people down here, they had simply chosen to ignore his transmissions.

Momentarily irked, he forced it down and exited the _Shadow Hunter _at a brisk march, ready to confront the first person he saw in the main lobby as to Reyne's whereabouts… as well as why it seemed the capital city was devoid of droids, or _any_ kind of machinery more complex than the hydraulics to the doors that opened before him. It was getting eerie.

Why would Reyne A'kla come to a dump like this? If her background was accurate, Vader would have expected her to travel to Koornacht or Eriadu or even Coruscant; not a tiny, out-of-the-way little hub like this. Mentally, he added that onto a grab bag of questions he would get out of the first planetary official he found by any means.

Ten minutes later, he gave up trying to find an official and just pointed to a sandy-haired man to get his attention. The man had a strange look about him, reacting with a small 'oooh', as though he was a child fascinated by the mere sight of Vader's black armor.

"You there", he said, "I must find Reyne A'kla, a Camaasi. Can you tell me where to find her?"

The man stared at the shiny parts of the armor a bit longer, not comprehending Vader at all.

"Listen to me. I must find Reyne A'kla. Your communications grid is completely shot. Do you understand?"

This repetition had been the limit of his patience. Thankfully, the man did respond, though not in any form of communication Vader knew of. He smiled and spoke in short syllables, each of them without pitch or variation except for their structure:

"Mo Ra Zu Ya To Li."

Vader began to suspect that this man was handicapped in some way- he had seen a few victims of neural shock in Coruscant's emergency wards before, some that couldn't string together a sentence, their brains had been so badly fried. But this man's eyes not blank, and he did not twitch.

He would try once more, this time applying a notable amount of pressure on the man's larynx.

"No. Speak basic. I must find Reyne A'kla at once. If you do not know, then tell me where your governor resides."

"To He Ga No Ru La Mu Ka Ta."

Deciding the galaxy would not greatly miss a man so incurably retarded he could no longer speak or understand basic, Vader slowly applied the other half of his power and watched the man choke. He had never done this in public before, and so he expected to have the handful of people around him shriek in horror at the sight of this man clutching his throat, gasping for breath… but it would get people to pay attention to him.

No one seemed to notice. They just continued to walk the streets, most not even giving them a second glance as the man he'd been choking collapsed on the duracrete.

Knowing that something was very wrong with this city, or at least its inhabitants, Vader expanded his senses outwards at the expense of sight. _Something unusual about their minds_, he observed once he had felt about twelve others in a city block. He did not have as much experience with the mind-influencing aspects of the Force as his former teacher- something about it had just struck him as wrong. But the further out his senses expanded, the more he began to realize that was exactly what aspect was at work here.

None of them spoke basic; only a torrent of syllables from the next man he tried to talk to, an older man he would have expected to be less childish than the first. "Na Shu Ra Lo Pa."

Whatever this babble meant, it had to be some form of language; he'd seen others whispering to one another in the same dialect. So he opened the mind of the elder man slowly, trying to pry out his way of speaking… and nearly fell over in shock.

There was nothing there. He'd only done this a few times before, during missions with Obi Wan, but each time the complete memory of a sentient being was so complex as to overwhelm Jedi senses. Memories of images, feelings, smells and sounds all cumulated into a flood of sensory data that he had always found difficult to navigate for what he was looking for.

Not so this time. This man's mind, like the one before him, was no more advanced than a newborn's. The knowledge of the language was burned into it unforgettably, along with a couple of other basic things.

_Newborns_, he shuddered, _newborns in adult bodies, all of them. What in the galaxy has Reyne A'kla done to these people?_

Hesitant to dive completely into the man's consciousness in fear that the stupidity might somehow 'infect' him, he was still able to impart the knowledge that would allow him to find that out.

_I pray to the Force that no one ever records this. It will be bad enough bearing the memory of my use of this language myself…_

_>_

M: A couple of things to keep in mind concerning problems with Vader's character in this story- it is set only about a month after Episode 3, and thus he hasn't completely become the rock-hard Sith Lord we see in the original trilogy. He is still pretty young, and thus still behaves a bit more like the Episode 3 Anakin Skywalker, childish the same way Naked Snake from MGS3 is childish. **REVIEW.**

If anyone is confused on the title of this chapter, it's from 'Always Two there are: a master and an apprentice.'


	4. Divergent Courses

Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. Only the five Forgotten characters were created by me, along with the planets Ichosar and Whrede. I found the official Sith code on a fansite.

-

_Three: Divergent Courses_

-

Master Kenobi felt the infant's grip upon his left hand, and reflected back to a voice and moment picked from happier times. _Truly magnificent, the mind of a child is._

He hadn't thought much of it at the time- he'd had bigger things to think about. But just by looking at the incredibly tiny baby, the bright tone of his flesh in contrast to the décor of Owen Lar's home, he could feel the truth behind Master Yoda's words.

Little Luke was babbling already- a good sign, usually an indication of high intelligence. Deeper in, only he could feel the child's mind as well as its body, and he admired its simplicity along with the simplistic, natural cuteness of a newborn.

_Such a refreshing change, _he thought happily,_ from every being I've ever known. Infants are so free in a way. Untainted by arrogance, or greed, or the poisonous deceptions and conspiracies that run rampant in this galaxy, and now grow with the rise of the Empire._

Even well meaning people such as Beru and Owen Lars standing with him, the former cooing softly while bringing a spoonful of mashed, dried sunfruit and a glass of blue milk to feed the baby, could be subject to it. Stepping back and placing one hand on his chin, he knew that he would be a fool to consider a Jedi Knight immune. _With the rise of intelligence comes the rise of ego. With the knowledge of life comes the knowledge of death. With that, comes fear, anger, and aggression._

That put his finger squarely on the mistake he had made, and would dwell upon the rest of natural life. He'd been just such a fool. The monster that he'd made- every life extinguished by the Dark Lord now known as Darth Vader hung upon his sagging shoulders.

Still, the sight of an innocent infant babbling and giggling in the simplest pleasures of existence did much to balm his troubled spirit, even as the suspicious press of Owen Lars' gaze tried to pry out the reason he was here.

Momentarily diverted from such careless bliss, he focused on the man as if truly seeing him for the first time. While many other worlds would look upon Owen as low-class refuse, his dusty gray attire conformed perfectly to the standards of the planet's few native denizens. His wife Beru, by contrast, sported a marine blue jacket and thin brown hair, neither of which showed the more extreme signs of what Obi Wan knew to be a challenging existence.

He'd been here before, on Tatoonie with his old master. But he had never truly stopped to think about how so many beings survived living in the trackless deserts, where no water flowed and no soil could be sown. Owen and Beru were just two of about sixty beings that had taken it upon themselves to try to fix that first problem… for a price, of course. The vanes he had seen ringing the perimeter of the tiny farm were able to coax moisture out of the very air and store it for later use.

_Life's necessities are always the most valuble items up for sale_, he noted. Painless as it sounded, installing and checking over a hundred devices set up around the area was undoubtedly rough, monotonous work. These two would not be here if they couldn't handle it.

So much the better then. Obi Wan could not afford to be selective- only surrogate family could be trusted with a task of this magnitude; to raise, to care for, to bring the galaxy's last hope into maturity. Owen didn't know it yet, but this boy was destined for great things, and strength of mind and body were needed for them.

Dwelling on this thought, he couldn't help but chuckle lightly as the tyke's tiny hands gripped the edge of the food bowl insistently, wanting to take it back for some reason.

"You have a strong one there." He said to Beru, amused. "You'd better watch out."

Beru smiled and went back to cooing encouragement. Obi Wan peered closer and marveled at the strange twinkling in those tiny bead eyes. Those eyes were half closed seconds later, and Luke sucked his thumb contentedly.

"I don't know to thank you for this opportunity", Beru told him quietly once the baby was asleep. "I always wanted to have one, but I was always afraid…"

"Afraid?"

"Afraid to bring a child into a world such as this. Controlled by rich Hutts from far off systems. Endless desert. More lowlifes and thugs than you or I could count."

He couldn't help but feel a little thrown by the bite she added to all the labels. "But you survived here. I can tell you are neither of those things."

She studied the matte floor with a glance to Owen. "We're not immune. Years before I met Shmi, my older brother- Cliegg's son- left us for good. The last we heard of him, he was running _slaves_ for Gargonn the Hutt and his ilk."

Feeling Owen's tentative gaze, Obi Wan took a breath and forced himself not to recoil. "I'm sorry. There is so much I don't know about this planet."

Beru didn't answer. She was looking back at the baby with loving eyes. "But I can't be afraid now. If some malcontent killed me tomorrow, I know Owen would still look after him. He's a hard man sometimes, but he has a good sense of right and wrong. Out here in the Jundlands, you get to look out for each other. Or you head off to Mos Espa and get used to looking after yourself, and no one else."

Knowing full well what she meant, he leaned close again, still inwardly amazed by how tiny the baby's toes and fingers were. "He has a special destiny", he said, voicing his mind at last. "We wouldn't have given him to anyone we didn't trust."

Kenobi didn't have to look at Owen to tell he was troubled by his use of the word 'we'. "What exactly do you mean, a 'special destiny'?"

Should he retract on that? Just say it was something he felt? _No. I won't lie to these folks. They have shown me every courtesy. _"Just that- I have felt it through the Force. This boy is special; he has Skywalker blood in him. I haven't done a Midi-Chlorian count yet, but I have a kit with my belongings if I-"

"General Kenobi, I think you'd better come with me."

-

It was a short trip, allowing little time for dread regarding the sharp tone that had found its way into the taller man's tone. Once they were outside of the domelike hut, Owen set his long arms on his hips and seemed to lose any moisture in the frame of his body.

"Now then, what kind of 'destiny' are we talking about here?"

Obi Wan could tell this was going to be bad, but once again could not bring himself to lie about his visions. "He's the son of Skywalker, remember, not yours. He is so young, and I can already feel his sensitivity to the living Force, I-"

_Very dense, Kenobi. You forget this place is a backwater. _With the rare exception, few Jedi had ever visited a dirtball such as this. To the resident moisture farmers, the Force was either a total unknown or a myth. This would account for the cockeyed look that Owen gave him, suggesting his guest was a victim of sun-madness.

"I know that he has the potential to undo the Empire", he finally said, trying to catch the farmer's attention. "Once he is old enough, I will train him myself."

"Stop talking", Owen growled, his eyes stretched wide. "It looks to me like you've already got this boy's entire life planned out for him, is that right?"

"Of course not, I only meant-"

"Not only that, but you want this boy to go risk his life to change the way this entire galaxy spins- something I _know_ is impossible. _Where_ is this boy's father?"

The center focus now. They'd been fencing around it, each man's intentions partially guarded. Obi Wan hung his head. "He's… dead. Along with his wife."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Really, I am." Somehow, Owen managed to retain a part of the anger creeping into his voice, all the while sounding genuinely apologetic about Obi Wan's lie. "But I bet when you came to us, all you saw were two stupid yokel moisture farmers. We could do your dirty work raising this kid for you, and you could steal him away again for whatever harebrained scheme you've got planned."

This had been, in fact, the absolute last thing on Obi Wan's mind at the time. Bigotry was not unknown to him, but that didn't mean he accepted any of its many forms.

Owen jabbed a trembling finger forward, his voice slowly rising with each sentence. "One month. One month we've raised this kid so far. We've fed him, clothed him, washed him, given him a place to sleep. My wife and I both know that caring for a child isn't all fun and games, 'specially out here in the Jundlands. We've done the hard work, and we'll continue to do the work. Far as I'm concerned, that makes him our son… and I'll be damned before I hand him over to you, you crazy old man."

The measures they had both consented to in order to not disturb the baby had failed; Owen's shout had woken Luke up, and now he was crying loudly back inside the shack.

Knowing he would might never again have the man's ear, Obi Wan reached one hand as Owen descended the stairs to help his wife and nephew. "Wait. You must understand. The Force has-"

Owen's baleful stare offered the final and most violent rebuke. "Stay away from my family."

-

A steady rain had begun to hammer the treetops over Asaajj Ventress' head and the breath mask, and she silently cursed Darth Vader wherever he was. _Huttspit. No reward_ _is worth this._

At first, locating the Gand Findsman named Zurxix Azur appeared to be the easy job. Gands were humble ammonia breathers, and could be poisoned by most kinds of oxygen. Whenever a Gand became ambitious enough to leave their home world for the great universe beyond, as so many of them did, they had been forced to wear breather masks connected to a healthy supply of ammonia.

At times, these bulky suits lent Gands the biomechanical appearance of cyborgs, and Asaajj hadn't expected any trouble in tearing Zurxix's clumsy breather mask off, then watching him squirm as his lungs destroyed themselves on the chilled oxygen of Helska.

That was before she had reached the ice planet, stationed as far away from the core as you could possibly get. Before she had found out that the tough old Gand had already moved on to a different planet, forcing her to grill what seemed to amount to half the people at the tiny research station for the Gand's whereabouts.

This had been exasperating enough, but then she had learned Zurxix's location. He had left for a planet neighboring Helska, a planet called Whrede.

Whrede, as she had soon learned in dismay, was _not_ a fun planet. Bad enough that the entire world was smothered in a stifling, humid jungle that seemed more mazelike than the urban canyons of the throne world Coruscant. _Oh no_, that wasn't nearly annoying enough; the planet just _had_ to be an ammonia planet, the constant mists forcing _her_ to wear a breather instead of him, forcing her to buy and wear protective eye filters that itched like crazy over her wide eye sockets.

Indeed, Zurxix would be right at home on this planet, similar as it was to Gand. _He_ had the talent for near-silent movement amidst this steamy jungle that she had never needed before.

Before her first day of searching had ended, she had found out another very important thing- the planet was also home to Flitnats, Kafits, Mist Inters, Acklays, Saribahs, and about a dozen other predatory species her small Helskan data pad didn't have a name for. Of course, they _all_ breathed ammonia just fine. And they were _all_ hungry for the flesh of one delectable female Rattatak.

She no longer doubted that Skywalker had sent her after the Gand out of pure spite. Maybe he already knew what kind of misery awaited the oxygen-breather who tried to catch Zurxix on the Outer Rim, and preferred to avoid it. _Well, I'll show him. I was trained by Ky Narec and Count Dooku; I will kill Zurxix before this day is over._

Surging forward with a new determination to accomplish her task before Vader, she pried two more screens of vines aside, still trying to maintain some modicum of stealth. Instead, her adjustment of a couple of branches made a dozen others crack loudly and made her ring out with another boiling curse directed at trees, Zurxix, ammonia mist, and _especially_ Vader.

The Gand was running from her, that much was obvious. Temped as she was to break out both of her flashing red sabers and cut her way straight to Zurxix, Asaajj knew that the other Jedi would just hear her coming even further away, and move appropriately far enough away. For now, he had the home field advantage.

_Only for now_, she swore darkly. _This is a savage planet, but my home was far worse. I am Sith. I got used to Rattatak, and I will get used to this. _

Then she would take great pleasure in exacting the long, long hours of humid misery out of Zurxix's leathery hide. 

-

The main band of Chandrila's control frequencies broke into Lord Vader's meditation slowly, at first only providing buzzy clouds of noise. Connected as he was to his breathing apparatus, Vader took a sigh of relief in his own mind, inwardly pleased that he was not too late.

Beneath his ever-present dark robes, Master Sidious would have been ashamed- in part, it had been his own reluctance to accept the truth that had taken him so long to leave the planet Ichosar and head for its neighbor, the last known destination of the last ship to leave that ruined colony behind.

"This is Lord Vader, envoy of the Galactic Empire requesting to land. Do you read me?"

"Loud and clear." a surprisingly sturdy and authoritative voice answered him from Chandrila's spaceport. "Sorry about the mess, my, uh, Lord- we just had an accident at the other end of the bay. We're investigating right now, so you'll have to land at the north platform, if you don't mind."

Crossing into the atmosphere, he could already see the stark white outline of the port, along with the tenets of a small city around it. Every building and road on Chandrila seemed to be milky white, contrasting with the calm green plains and blue lakes of the planet's undeveloped areas. For a moment, it hurt his eyes to see so much white.

All the same, better never than late. Now he knew part of what the Camassi Reyne A'Kla had done to the attention-seeking people of Ichosar. He accepted it, however disturbing it might be. _I should not be so revolted by this,_ he reminded himself angrily._ With the power of the Force, so many things can be done to those without that potential that they cannot resist. This is simply another instance of that fact._

And really, he wasn't one to talk either. Several of the infantile citizens of Ichosar had kicked the oxygen habit, courteously of his black-gloved handiwork. _If I had known that it was not their fault…_

Excuses, excuses. The _Shadow Hunter _had now settled down to rest on one of the highest platforms of the Comati spaceport- he needed only to look down in order to see several other ships of varying size and classes beneath him, almost as though Comati had been structured class-consciously to keep the most valued clients on the top, while putting shabby ships near the bottom.

Dealing with the inevitable diplomatic reception from a handful of Comati's officials was something he'd almost gotten used to, after so many missions to other worlds as Anakin Skywalker. He had expected a particular reaction from these simple men when they saw his black helmet and armor, and with the exception of one he was not disappointed.

It was the youngest one there who surprised him, standing there on the walkway as Vader brushed past him. A teen with bright blond hair arrayed in a dome over his green eyes, he wore the least extravagant of all the outfits surrounding the two of them.

Ever since the incident, Vader had become noticeably better at reading other people's emotions, even as his ability to feel his own dimmed. This boy was as surprised as the rest of them at the sight of the Empire's envoy, his gruesome helmet and grille, the black lenses that served for eyes… but it was a different kind of shock. A familiar kind.

He had drowned out all the unimportant words the others had to say to him about Chandrila's place in the Empire. Vader did not care for petty bureaucratic nonsense, especially when it distracted him from his true mission.

His _true _objective, which had just then given itself away in a flicker of Force energy.

"I am not here on any business pertaining to your world, officers", he said icily. "For that, you may speak with your Chandrila-Ichosar Senator. I have come here to find a certain… individual. An older Camaasi woman. I felt her power just now, she is not far."

He was able to get the message across to them without using anything more in the way of words; that this was a private mission, and anyone who got in his way for too long would be sorry they asked. Hoping to avoid any further interference from the well-dressed civilians on the streets, Vader bunched his muscles up beneath the suit to project an even larger, more forbidding figure stalking the streets of the city.

A 'normal' city, not at all like Coruscant. Chandrila's architects seemed to favor tall white spires jutting up from all across a large tarmac of roads. He could touch the ground- the real ground- on this planet, something that no one could claim about Coruscant's kilometer-deep abysses. People could go their entire lives there and never see soil or grass.

Needless to explain, he attracted more than a few stares. Comati was a city of white, and his black stood out on it like nothing else could. So, it was easy for the young spaceport mechanic who had not feared him before to catch up on the main roads- Vader saw him coming.

"I would have thought you more intelligent than your masters", he said, his words freezing the youth in mid-run. "I specifically ordered to be left alone to deal with the Camaasi."

The youth gave a weak nod. "Of course you did. But when I saw you, I just had to know; who are you?"

Vader continued to walk, making it difficult for him to keep up with the mechanical pacing. After two blocks of this, he realized the younger man wasn't going to just go away. There was something driving him, giving him the impulse to run full out just to keep pace with the Dark Lord.

Vader still did not halt, but permitted him to catch up before going back to an inhumanly quick stride. "My name is unimportant for now. I imagine the entire galaxy will know it soon enough."

Nearly hitting an obese Twi'Lek, the boy dodged around and spoke in deep breaths. "I just wanted to know. I thought maybe you were an actor or something."

"If you have something to tell me, then say it now- I have no more time to waste on you."

The boy seemed to be training his eyes on the ground as he walked, but then he looked right into Vader's most menacing stance without any fear at all. "But now I see you're from Coruscant, not here. You wouldn't know about the story the Black Knight of Justice."

This time, his knowledge of the Jedi would betray him to curiosity. Momentarily forgetting about the flares of Force ahead, he stopped. "What Knight are you babbling about? Is there _another_ Jedi here?"

The teen pressed his index fingers together nervously now that he'd caught some attention. "Oh, not a Jedi Knight. It's just an old myth from Chandrila: The Black Knight of Justice. In your armor, you looked just like him, that's all. Sorry for bothering you."

He was getting too soft. On another day, he would have choked the young man to death for daring to waste his time this way, even if it was just a case of mistaken identity. Instead, he simply used his left arm- his sole flesh limb- to bat him aside and continue towards the warehouse district.

-

It hadn't taken a long time to find the warehouse Reyne A'Kla was hiding in- constant flickers of another great power through the Force acted almost like a homing signal to Vader's heightened senses. Almost as though Reyne was calling to him, as if she didn't care about hiding…

Chandrila's law enforcement would find nothing amiss in the L2 Food Storage warehouse- any power that could change an Ichosan citizen into an infant could make someone walk away and forget anything suspicious just as easily. But Vader ignored the strange compulsion to leave the area and forget that the place's lights were on in the middle of the day.

Standing right out in front of the wide swing door, Vader clutched his saber. _This is it, then. A quick kill is safest- aggressive negotiations. Now we find out how well constructed Chandrila's warehouse doors are._

The door could not stop a blaster, so of course it crumpled under a lightsaber. Stalking through the hole only slightly larger than him, Vader stepped out of Chandrila's pleasant morning air… and into a nursery.

That was the only way he could think to describe it, knowing what his target could do to people. The walls were still corrugated metal instead of the easy-going cream color he'd seen in a couple of places back on Coruscant, but everything else fit. On the floor, about a dozen men and women of varying ages, nestled on simple cushions in blissful slumber.

Some of them were not asleep. Instead they moved their arms and legs about, their eyes wide in wonder that they could make the things move. A few others were up on crates, speaking the same nonsense language he'd seen on Ichosar.

And there, sitting in the midst of all of them as the teacher and parent, was Reyne A'Kla, the long golden fur sprouting from her thin frame making her look both benevolent and benign, almost grandmotherly.

He knew he would be taken as a hypocrite, but could not help himself after seeing the ugly truth firsthand: "You are a _very_ sick woman, Reyne A'Kla."

Only then did she give the slightest sign of having noticed he was there, even though Vader knew that the Jedi must have sensed his presence before he even entered the warehouse. Still managing to look completely harmless, her eyes opened and her stance slanted from a tender caress to addressing a stranger. "Ra He Wu Sha Ma."

Not without reluctance, A'Kla's victims obeyed the command and distanced themselves from both Jedi and Sith, leaving a vacant gap of several meters. Vader's saber was out before he remembered that, in accordance with her race's deeply ingrained pacifism, she would _never_ use a Lightsaber, Blaster, or any other kind of weapon.

Any other _physical _weapon, anyway…

"I know why you have come", she said to him, still radiating absolute calm and peace. "But I wish that you would put your weapon away. It upsets the children."

Frowning at her audacity to suggest such a thing, he remembered what he had seen on Ichosar. "I would prefer to destroy you here- the sight would go a long way towards snapping these men and women out of your spell."

Unfolding her legs, Reyne stood up. "You lie. You know perfectly well that your weapon will frighten them. Put it away. There is no need for violence."

Wishing only to display the utmost contempt for her deeds, Vader only raised his saber angrily, ready to slice into Reyne's tan flesh. "There is every need for me to kill you if you plan to continue what I have seen this day. The population of Ichosar has been reduced to infants that speak a language _you_ invented, and I sense you have the same fate in store for Chandrila."

Reyne looked disappointed instead of frightened or angered by his words, drawing several steps closer to him without any sign of fear. "A fine bit of detective work, Lord of the Sith. Can you carry that algorithm to its end?"

Of course he could. Anyone who knew of this power, knew what she could accomplish, would take a Coruscant second to see what could happen if such a talent was put to creative use.

She was planning on doing this to the _galaxy_.

Any of the younglings he'd slaughtered three weeks back could recite the limits of Jedi Power; there was none. The power of the Force- and it's ability to control the actions of others- was to be only limited by how much special individuals could open themselves to it.

It was the reason why his master had not simply used the Dark Side to enwrap the minds of his subjects. He could control a few crucial Senators, seize power over a battalion or two… but the entire galaxy consisted of thousands of trillions of sentient beings. No one was powerful enough to control them all directly. No one ever would be.

But Reyne A'kla had devised an elegant solution to that problem; the Force-imposed destruction of a person's long-term memory, sending it back to the maturity of a mere infant.

She'd even gone one step further, forcing knowledge of her own made-up language into each mind. Now, every single man and woman on Ichosar had imprinted her as their own mother. She could never bring herself to use a weapon, but she didn't _need_ one to wipe the memory of a galaxy, person-by-person and planet-by-planet.

Vader digested all of this in silence, and regarded this harmless-looking Camaasi woman with renewed contempt. Not since his awakening from Mustafar had he felt such intense rage.

"You have made one mistake", he grated out grimly. "Your powers are useless against another Force-user. I will defend myself, and you… cannot."

He moved quickly enough so that his saber was brought to the base of her neck before her own power made its presence known. The red glare of death halted millimeters before her flesh.

He'd been mostly wrong. The Dark Side powers he'd focused so much anger to master were of little defense inside his own mind. He could resist her, but barely, and only through the strongest mental resistance he could put up.

Mental defense was another game Anakin Skywalker had detested, mostly because it involved a lot of sitting around, eyes closed. Vader almost regretted that now, because while his defense could guard one area of his memory, it couldn't protect everywhere.

She had started by attacking all memory of the Lightsaber, the weapon he held at her neck.

By the time he'd put up a near-impenetrable wall around those memories, she'd eaten into the basic memories of _how _to put up such a block. He sensed that other memories were in danger, being chipped away at through his strongest Force-barrier, but would lose all recollection of each piece before he knew it was missing.

He'd already put up an iron wall around all his memories of Padme and Senator Palpatine, but Reyne's mastery of mental attacks exceeded his own. Just as Reyne was an utter novice in the use of the Lightsaber and telekinesis, it was _he _who was the amateur in this deadly art.

_Padme. Padme Amidala. We first met back on Tatoo-_

Now that name and everything connected to it was gone as well. A voracious parsite was eating his memories one by one. A parasite who's name and species he couldn't remember, couldn't remember why it was that he was-

_Why are we fighting?_

He realized that wasn't his own thoughts, but the sentiment of the golden-furred woman standing in front of him, her face locked into concentration even as she spoke through his thoughts.

_Yours is a tortured, maimed soul. Be at peace, along with the rest of us. There will be peace…_

Another memory about to be erased, this one jarred loose by what she'd said. '_…The Sith will rule the Galaxy.'_

'_And there **will** be peace.'_

The engraved memory of his Master. A man of proclamations, with the power and will to make those claims stick. But what the Emperor had said that day, after blasting Master Windu out the window and into death, was a lie.

"Peace is a lie", Vader spoke up for the first time in many minutes. His focus, along with his ability to save his memories, became hard as the ingrained truths of the Code of the Sith. "There is only Passion."

"Through passion I gain strength."

Instead of simply holding off her assault, Vader drove the next verse into Reyne A'kla's brain so hard her eyes bulged.

"Through strength I gain power."

Pounding like a war song through his remaining blood vessels, each quotation was met with a renewed effort to erase it from Vader's memory. A futile effort- the code was a solid, permanent thing. It was set in stone in a mind that believed in it beyond all doubt.

There was his saber, still hanging at Reyne's neck, all men and women she'd violated watching with acute fascination; they didn't know what the red glow was for.

"Through power, I achieve victory. Through victory my chains are broken!"

They found out by example, but Reyne A'kla's voice had not faded.

Instead, it was rising. Beyond words, beyond flesh, the intrusive presence was building to a thunderous peal that rocked Vader away from the new corpse, and backwards onto the floor.

For a moment, he had seen past the boundaries of matter. Vader had watched helplessly as the luminous being named Reyne A'kla cascaded into a screaming supernova that engulfed his universe within its blaze.

_The Force shall set me free…_

-

Half a galaxy away, Obi Wan Kenobi woke up.

He was staring at the blank, rounded ceiling of his new dwellings with a cold sweat shining on both sides of is head in the Tatoonie night. Ignoring it, he sat straight up on the cot, going over what he had felt.

_No._ It was he had _not _felt that was important. First, a quasar of Force energy erupting around the man who had once been his Padawan, most of it suffused with hatred. Vader had been in some sort of major struggle, that much had been clear through the connections he still had to what was left of the elder Skywalker.

He put a hand to his fevered forehead, expecting a painful result after a jolt of the kind that had awakened him.

Of Vader, of Anakin, he now felt nothing at all. Not even the smallest whispers of him were left in the Force.

Absently throwing on his robe, he walked out to meet the stars that beckoned to him from the door. A thousand stars… and no trace of him. Emptiness.

_Here, then gone,_ he mused silently with the stars. _Should I laugh at Vader, or should I cry for Anakin?_

Only one thing was for certain: whatever explosive event had brought about his apprentice's end had been subtle as a Rancor… and he was not the only one who could feel it, and react.

---

M: Perfecting this chapter took _forever_. I will hopefully have the next one up much sooner- now that all my other active fics are taken care of, I can give this my full attention. I'd love to see commentary on any of this one's events or ideas.

For morons- NO, Vader's not dead.


	5. Who are You?

Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. The Schintian race was thought up by me.

-

_Four: Who are You_

-

Smoke, confusion, and an everpresent layer of mist had settled into the highlands of Whrede.

It was the animal's confusion, not _her_confusion. Asaajj Ventress' mind was clear as space in its desire and destination- she was looking up, out of the cloud where the Ammonia was thick enough to hinder visibility. Now that the animals around here rightfully feared her, she would have no more interruptions.

_I have you now. _Zurxix was very close by, close enough to see in normal visibility. He'd ended this night's chase by perching himself on the highest hill for a hundred klicks. Then he'd just stopped moving.

It was such an odd tactical choice she'd instantly suspected a trap. Not only was the cliff only accessible by one path, but it stretched high enough so that one could see the world's weakling sun, above the mists.

If it had been her, she would have plunged into the very deepest of the planet's overgrown valleys. Down there, eyes were much worse than useless- they would sting much harder than anything she'd felt in the past few days. She'd seen the valleys herself, giant openings thrusting through the earth like gaping mouths. About half a kilometer down each of them, the mist would thicken so that she could not see the valley bottom.

If there _was _a bottom.

In any case, Zurxix had been stupid not to hide in the valleys, to pop his big head up where his assassin would be sure to see it.

In one long leap, she parted ways with the tree she'd been hanging from and bounded straight for the Gand Jedi's back.

Something large and black flew directly into her at the halfway point. Not a Force affected object- the thing was kicking at her with dewclaws on its hind legs even as they fell off to one side. The thing had pounced from nowhere, and pinned both her arms before either could use the weapons they held.

Instantaneous white rage fired all through her, and the predator suddenly found it could not make its pin stick. She kicked the creature hard in the chest before it could bring its needle-tooth jaws down, slackening its hold on her already-bleeding arms.

Suddenly she took great care to remain perfectly still. Either it's injuries or something else had made the creature back off from its kill. Instead, there was now a familiar purple beam cutting across her vision, angled in such a way so that the slightest twitch would remove her head from her shoulders.

Zurxix's bug eyes bored downward at Asaajj, betraying no more emotion than his weapon. "That was most unprofessional of you, young Ventress."

She mumbled a Sith-curse, but forcefully stopped the fast-boiling urge to leap up at him and into the purple glare.

Above her, the Gand hunter sighed remorsefully. "Zurxix has feared this. Young Ventress will not listen to Zurxix, she will not listen to what he has to say."

In the back of her head, something else clicked- the whole of Gand society felt it the height of arrogance to use personal pronouns. A silly little cultural rule that forced his mandibles to buzz out his entire name instead of just 'I'.

To her surprise, he removed the blade from her neck just then, and stretched one arm down to grasp hers.

The absurdity of it was too much. Ardor and compassion for a Sith assassin? Did this fool even _know_ who he was dealing with?

Whatever the reason, she was going to make him regret his weakness. All in one single motion, she flipped onto her feet, ignoring her wounds, then grasped and ignited both of her blood red lightsabers into an 'X' shaped cross of death against his single beam.

Far too late, she heard a familiar growl- the same animal, pouncing from behind and forcing her round head into the grass with both paws. She could only see the black dirt of the ground, partly scorched by the twin sabers she'd turned off just in time to save herself.

"And yet", he said as if nothing had happened to interrupt them, "Zurxix knows Asaajj hunts him for a good cause. Which is why Zurxix will surrender his life once Asaajj listens to him."

Buried face-first in the dirt, Zurxix couldn't see her snarl, one not unlike his pet Vornshkr, who now held her pinned again. _Careful. This bug is playing mind games with you. Wait for him to drop his guard, then carve his heart out._

The slightest tremble, a shift in his stance- he'd felt those violent thoughts as well. Only once she dug her face out of the wet dirt did she see that he'd backed all the way to the cliff's edge, arms spread-eagled.

"If Asaajj attacks now", the Gand said, "Zurxix will leap to the bottom of this, the deepest of Whrede's valleys. Zurxix knows where he can hide for weeks, eluding death. Listen to Zurxix, and he will allow you to accomplish _your_ mission."

-

An eight-foot reptile gazed at the image before him, and tasted the air to be sure of the truth.

He gave a toothy smile, having felt every inch of the death as though he was there himself. "Then you felt it also, Lon?"

The Forgotten Jedi nodded to his comrade across the holo-link. "I could not ignore it. Reyne's despair and anguish called out to me, as did Kahl Gonak's before his death. The old man is picking us off one by one."

Trasshk hissed semi-hysterically at the gall Lon had in calling Palpatine an old man, considering the furrows that weighed down his sloping brow. Even in a blue-trim hologram, Lon's cracked leather wings were showing their atrophy along with his talons and fangs. His species, however voracious they were in their prime, aged quickly.

_He's strong with the Force, _Trasshk gloated inwardly,_ but not that strong._

He would never allow such a fate to befall himself, he swore. He'd seen century-old Transdoshans back on the home world, and bedrock knew they were sad, pathetic little creatures. Yellowed, filmy scales covering seemingly infinite wrinkles. Far worse, though, was the dulling of their teeth. His own father, for one, couldn't even penetrate hide without help.

_No, I'll find a way to make myself useful before that happens. _His teeth slid out again, reminding him why he was working with this dusty old Schintian fossil._ Ruling the new Galactic Empire is a nice start._

That had been the plan, three weeks ago when they first conceived it. Lon had passed the message on subtly, informing each of them about the recent shift in power within the decaying Republic- a system of authority just as obsolete as his late father.

But the thing he'd found growing in its place was appealing as a nice fat haunch of Wookiee meat. _Now the Jedi are gone and we are here, ready to pluck the spoils from Palpatine's withered hand. _Lon, the human named Kahl Gonak, and himself had all wanted a piece of the rhyscate. Reyne A'kla and Zurxix had been less enthusiastic, but still agreed to come to the proposed gathering.

But now the young upstart human was dead by an unknown hand, along with that disgusting little pacifist Reyne A'kla. While he'd regretted Gonak's passing, he wouldn't really be missed in the grand scheme of things. _Just two fewer hands to divide the spoils with._

"I have been trying to get a hold of Zurxix", Lon continued, "to warn him about the assassins, but he doesn't seem to be listening. If he dies, I really do doubt our chances of toppling Palpatine. With five it would have been easy, but only two?"

Trasshk's reptilian eyes tightened at the mention of another member of their group he would not miss. "Zurxix is a bug-faced idiot. He spends more time on the Outer Rim looking for visions than he does helping us! You know he never really wanted to rule the Empire."

"May I remind you", Lon said, the strain of his patience finally edging through, "that Zurxix was a prophetic legend on par with Master Yoda before he left the order? He might not have been a mental adept like Reyne or a supreme master with the Lightsaber like yourself-"

"-No need to flatter me-"

"-But his visions have _never _been wrong", Lon continued weightily. Relaxing his leather wings into a folded cross, he sighed. "I feel less than comfortable conspiring behind the old man's back without Zurxix to make certain our futures remain assured."

Trasshk let his own repulsion shine through in full force, snarling loudly enough to scatter nearby patrons. "Listen to you, you sound like a fussy protocol droid. I know you're not so much of a coward that you'd back out of this without a 100-percent guarantee that we'll succeed. Zurxix said we'd win last time, and nothing's changed since then."

Lon showed his own dull fangs, tiny little things compared to Trasshk's nightmarish jaws. "_Everything _has changed since then, my friend. Since then, we had five. Whoever it is that killed young Gonak and Reyne will be coming for us next- you don't need to be Zurxix to know that."

Even this news only broadened the Trandoshan's grin into a meat-eating smile. "_Good_. Ruling this fragging backwater was fun for about two days until I found where all the interesting animals hide."

It was difficult to tell what sort of feelings Lon was radiating in response to this gruesome bluster. As strong in the Force as he had been, Trasshk had never completed any sort of training on how to perceive the thoughts and feelings of others- just one of many reasons why he'd left. His was a species naturally inclined to anger and fighting, but not even another Trandoshan would dare challenge him now.

Now, that Lon and Zurxix had helped him become the self-imposed dictator of T'gattok. Just as Lon had procured his own little enclave of power on another planet as a prelude to the coming succession, he now had enough fear-driven servants and resources to keep him busy.

Now he looked back into the aging Schintian's eyes with his own lizard-slits and realized that Lon thought of him as an inferior. More than just the arrogant so-called wisdom of his people, he had always viewed him- a fellow reptile- as hired muscle with no brain, to be used and discarded like a hefty vibroaxe.

"He'll come for me next, yes?" he said eagerly, trying to ignore Lon's bemused stare. "Once he gets here, he's dead- I'll see to that. But like you said, he already got Gonak. Can't you-"

"No", Lon spoke up, his tones now icy as he folded his ratty wings. "Not in the way you would imagine. Even I recognize that ability as unnatural, an affront to the Force itself. I… shouldn't use it any more than I must. Only once the old man's assassin is taken care of, Trasshk. Don't fail me."

_Coward. Bantha-brained fossil. _The insults were on the tip of his tongue, along with a few other choice words, but the holo-link had already faded.

"Oh well", he hissed out with enough enthusiasm that every servant in the room ducked away expecting to be summarily killed in his good mood. That made him laugh as well, standing up in front of the projector. _I can wait a few more days, just as long as a Sith Lord is as tasty as my dear father was._

-

His body twitched awake to remembered pain. It was as though the man had woken from a deep sleep, the power of all senses just now returning to him.

Once he did, he immediately realized that several things were terribly wrong with the galaxy.

For one, he was looking at the world- or in this case, just a corrugated metal wall- through red-tinged lenses. The sound of crying was coming from somewhere, but he was still too overwhelmed to get up off the floor. Such weight and mass on his body!

_The emptiness_. That was the cause of his despair. A memory devoid of the answers to such basic questions as: _Who am I? Why am I here?_

Such concerns would have to wait- he wasn't so stupid as not to know how to work his arms and legs, heavy as they were. And he really wanted that annoying mechanical breathing noise to stop.

Sitting back up to his full height, he realized it was _him _who was making the noise. A mechanical respirator was muffling his face, flowing downwards into black armor and cybernetics. He presumed that the respirator had been put in due to a need, and did not fiddle with it.

The next source of his discomfort, however, he was sure he could do something about.

"Enough", he spoke for the first time to the many tear-stricken men and women around him in the warehouse. A very deep and serious bass, he noted, accentuated by the mechanical breathing apparatus. "I do not know how it is we all came to be here, but crying about it will not accomplish anything."

He may as well not have spoken. His voice scared several of them, causing him to actively wonder why all these people were so fragile. Clearly he was different from the others in many ways, the black armor being the least of them. He felt stronger, more stable than everyone else, and he was certainly less prone to weak emotional displays.

The man- if he could still be called that- stood motionless for nearly a minute before determining he could do nothing for these people until he regained some of his own memories. Striding through a freshly-burned hole in the door that seemed etched around his figure, he stalked out into the glaring sunlight of Chandrila, seeking answers.

-

Stalemate.

Asaajj Ventress' twin sabers were both out and at the ready, illuminating the jungle a mere five meters from Zurxix's flesh. So close, and yet so far he may as well have been miles away.

No doubt existed in her mind now that Zurxix's threat was real. Tempting as it would be, as possible as it might be to fall down the valley after her prey and Force-accelerate herself to catch up midfall, the bottom of these valleys was death for any creature that did not breathe ammonia. It would be suicide even without Zurxix's pet Vornshkyr breathing down her neck.

At the edge of the cliff, Zurxix blinked once, sensing her thoughts as they formed. "Zurxix is glad to see he is not the only creature who can predict events", he buzzed smartly, "So many creatures in this galaxy can only understand what is in directly front of them."

"Alright", Ventress growled out in a way the Vornshkyr would be hard-pressed to equal. "Get your little story over with, _then_ I'll kill you."

At once, the Gand Jedi's mood seemed to brighten noticeably, folding his arms. "Zurxix is pleased. The young one demonstrates more patience than expected. Zurxix will tell you of the reason he left galactic civilization behind."

"Hurry it up", she replied harshly. "I'm in a race I don't want to lose."

Nodding slightly, he motioned for his pet to move several meters back. "About five years ago, before the outbreak of the Clone Wars, Zurxix caught hold of a new vision in his meditations. He saw a galaxy in flames. He saw civilization as we know it ending forevermore, along with the Jedi."

She spat on the ground. "I could tell you that much, bug. The Jedi are all but extinct now, thanks to the efforts of Skywalker and his master. They're changing things-"

"No", the Gand interrupted her suddenly. "That is not the vision Zurxix saw. He saw a new threat approaching from outside our own galaxy. Not human, nor any alien species he knows of. It is this threat that destroyed galactic civilization in his vision."

Finally stunned into a momentary silence by the seriousness in his tone, Asaajj waited for more.

"Zurxix does not know if the threat is twenty, fifty, or a hundred years distant," he admitted. "All he knows is that they are coming to destroy and enslave us all. The threat is coming from this edge of our galaxy, closest to Helska 4. _That _is why Zurxix agreed to help these greedy, self-serving fools seize power over the Empire- to make as many warships as possible for twenty years, to unify us for the threat that is to come."

"And that's why you left for the edge of the galaxy", she finished for him sarcastically, shifting to a fake-sweet tone. "You thought you could see more of them coming from that distance. That's an interesting little doomsday theory. I'm not buying it. Now, how many pieces would you like to be divided into?"

Zurxix said nothing, instead projecting himself into Asaajj's mind with renewed vigor.

The younger fighter's head throbbed as she lunged forward with both sabers, this time careful not to use the Force too strongly. More images forced themselves over her sight in the opposite fashion of Reyne A'kla's ability- Zurxix was _adding_ memories, not subtracting them. He was still doing so when the two sabers converged upon his neck, removing his head…

Which left Asaajj alone with the images so forcefully pushed into her in Zurxix's last moments. These were not the by-products of a fevered imagination, or a mind driven mad by solitude out here in the jungle.

These were very _real_. She could almost reach out and touch the flesh of the ugly bipedal creature standing in her mind's eye. Beyond that, she sensed strange shadows, voids in the sense Zurxix had used to get them. A rainbow-eyed enemy, commanding thousands of ships, an armada containing _billions_ of the bipedal aliens... altars devoted to Gods and legendary names she did not know…

For the first time since she was a frightened orphan on Rattatak, Asaajj Ventress knew true fear even as Zurxix's pet nuzzled her in comfort.

-

M: I'll be honest- I really was ready to give up on this story until I got my fourth review, a very detailed and nice one that encouraged me to write more. :) Hopefully now that the school term is up until January, I can concentrate on this a bit better, maybe get Chapter 5 up by Christmas. No promises.

Personally, I think I dropped a few too many hints about what the 'threat' is, but don't go blabbing it out to everyone who hasn't read about them yet.


	6. In Darkest Knight

Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. The five Forgotten characters, Sedriq Uso, andRolan Weskwere created by me, along with the planets Ichosar and Whrede.

-

Five: In Darkest Knight 

-

Sedriq Uso had not expected a second run-in with the man in black armor. At the same time, he had secretly hoped for it.

There was something about the way that man had shown up, he had realized after finishing his shift, which had become the one special event of a very boring day on the job. Lord… Valer, was it? Whatever his name had been, he was clearly not a faceless bureaucrat, nor a thuggish bodyguard to some greater authority figure. He was unique, his own man of power.

Then there was that freakish similarity he had to one of the oldest Chandrilan legends- the black knight of justice. Having never left his home planet, Sedriq knew the details of it better than most; A figure in black armor that eclipsed even their face and identity, wielding a blade that could only hurt the wicked. Was this some kind of weird public-relations campaign by the Imperial Senate?

Whatever the cause, he couldn't get the man off his mind. So his reaction when he first found the very same figure walking down the ferrocrete road near where he'd just finished his shift was not one of complete shock.

"Hey!" Sedriq shouted out to the armored figure, at least trying to come across a bit less of a dreamer than last time. "Did you find what you wanted?"

The man turned, his helmet now looking a bit more gruesome than before in the shadows of the afternoon sun. "Did I…?"

Threatening as the respirator-accentuated tone remained, it seemed to have lost a great deal of its bite since their last encounter. The black knight faced Sedriq, his cape billowing behind him. "You know me."

Immediately confused, the youth tried to stammer out an appropriate response while the larger man continued. "Then who am I?"

"Are you saying you don't know?"

He nodded, embarrassed to admit this sudden vulnerability. "My head… I sense I have been in an incident… a battle, most likely."

Rather than encourage exploitation or anything of the sort, this admission only deepened Sedriq's ardor. He walked a few steps closer, looking into that black mask that, under any other circumstance, would have been terrifying. He, on the other hand, felt none of it.

"I'm Sedriq Uso. We met only once, briefly. I… come with me to my home, and I'll see what I can do to help you. Do you at least remember your name?"

That massive helmet gazed up at the orange sky as if trying to pluck the answer from there. "I do not remember if it is mine, but I remember an important name. Anakin. Anakin Skywalker. That is all."

Sedriq blinked, trying to hide a rush of giddy excitement inside him. "That'll do for now. Come with me, Anakin, and we'll see if we can't fix you up."

-

Trasshk plucked the last shred of raw Nerf from his jaws none too gently, and scowled at more than just the aftertaste. "You said he would be here by now."

He knew that even across this distance, Lon would be able to sense his frusturation and impatience for something else to kill. He could convey that with the calmness of his expression or the contemplative arch of his claws, but none of these motions had succeeded in calming his partner down. Saying the word 'patience' would be an invitation to disaster.

Instead, the aging Schintian spread both wings and feigned an expression of innocence. "I have realized this, Trasshk. Believe me, I have spent the past hours searching for him through the Force. I have not sensed the slightest surge, except for Palpatine's own dark meditations."

The massive Trandoshan crooked one jagged claw at the holo-link as if gouging someone he disliked. "I don't buy it. No way Reyne could have killed Vader. What if he's hiding? That's just what I'd expect a little human to do once he learned he had to fight _me_."

Again struggling to contain any number of witty deadpan rebukes, Lon opened his eye slits wide. "It is a possibility, but an unlikely one. Why would the assassin cease to draw upon the Force and stop all their activities after killing our young Camassi friend? Have you kept the public space lanes running?"

"Around the clock", Trasshk snarled back. "A nuisance if you ask me. But that didn't stop him from killing Gonak and Zurxix."

Silence from the other end. Trasshk smiled cruelly. "That bothers you, eh?"

Lon made no movement with his head, but simply folded both leathery wings protectively around his body. "Our mutual ally agrees with me that it makes sense. Even a Class 1 Hyperdrive could not deliver our assassin to Whrede within four hours of departure from Chandrila. The only solution I can think of is that there are two of them. This Sith Lord Vader we have learned of, and one other."

"And both of them too afraid to come knocking on my door", Trasshk grumbled. "Well if Vader is too cowardly to come to me, I'll just have to pay Chandrila a visit instead. Find out who and where the other one is, Lon- I'll kill them as well."

"And then on to Palpatine?", the smaller alien jested mockingly, no longer able to sit and humour his ally. "I am not your data sifter droid- I do as I please. Moreover, you have responsibilities- our friend is coming with you once we are finished creating a plan to resolve this conflict with us on top."

This stopped the Trandoshan's dreaming of the carnage to come just for a moment. As much distaste as he had for the strange new agent that had contacted them weeks beforehand, Lon's wording intrigued him. "On top? As in…?"

Lon allowed himself a quick smile, closing his weary eyes to hide their triumph. "Yes. As in victory, and rulership of the galaxy."

-

Outside, staring inwards at the wide glass panel that framed the family room, Sedriq knew his home wouldn't be much for a Republic or Imperial higher-up to look at. His residence was actually the bottom layer of one of Chandrila's stark white apartments, two rooms bought out for lack of any real housing- one would have been cheaper, but even his mother admitted that was too small a space for four occupants.

Five, now. The amnesiac he'd found who bore the armor of Chandrilan legend had not spoken to anyone besides him yet, sitting off in the side room Sedriq's father had made his workshop, trying to regain some shred of what or who he had been.

He frowned at that memory. Using his father's equipment, he'd already put the man through several scans, checking out his cybernetic components as well as the flesh beneath. The scanner had indicated severe burn damage, but nothing that could cause a total blanking of a person's memory. _The damage he's taken_, he thought grimly_, as well as the power he controls, is something beyond what my dad's old stuff can detect._

Noticing he had less than ten minutes before he would have to explain the new presence in their home to his parents, he sighed and breezed back into the workshop, found the man standing upright near the bench as if rooted to that spot.

The aura that surrounded this man- whoever he was- served a better deterrent than his foreboding armor. Sedriq took three drawn-out lungfuls of air before walking the full way in, trying his hardest to look his guest directly in the round black lenses. "How do you feel, um, my lord?"

A sharp note of anger flashed through the big man's concentration, and Sedriq took a moment to realize that this was not directed at him, but at whatever circumstances had reduced him to this state. "Lost. There is so much here I can barely grasp. Little emotion, except for anger."

It was more than just words. Just as he had felt the aura of anger, Sedriq could almost see the limits of his attempts at recollection. There were images of people and places and things the man did not know the names for, dancing just out of his reach like forbidden fruit.

Just like that, they would vanish whenever he tried to open them up. Sedriq finally pulled himself out of the furious concentration of effort, looking closer at the black armor. "Your medical scans just checked in. Now I get why you wear that helmet. Your lungs are completely toasted- without it, you'd be dead. The same goes for half your cybernetics- they, at least, are in perfect shape."

The other man nodded, knowing Sedriq was only babbling on like this to try and help him remember things. "It was not technology that did this to me. It was the Force. Of that much, I am sure."

"The Force? You mean, like a Jedi?"

Again, the man tensed. Had he stumbled upon a new memory?

"Possibly", he said at last. "But I do not think a Jedi would be trapped this way."

Closing his eyes with regret, Sedriq shook his head. "You give them too much credit- from what I've heard, they're all gone now. Something about an attempt to assassinate the chancellor, but that's a crock of nerf dung. I didn't believe it for a second."

He'd said too much, babbling as he usually did when he got nervous around someone. The black helmet stared back at its reflection in one of the panels carefully, giving that reflection back in its eye lenses. "Then you, my friend, are smarter than most. I am not a Jedi… Sedriq. But I know I am a man of power. When my memory returns to me, the Empire will compensate you for your assistance."

He acted as though he hadn't heard him, still idly toying with a hydrospanner. "Not a Jedi. A knight, maybe?"

The man shifted his stance, bringing Sedriq's nervous reflection into the two round lenses. "I know what it is you want me to be- I sense your feelings."

For the first time, the young man did not flinch away from that dark mask in the slightest, this time staring into the two lenses knowing that the older man's gaze could sense his emotions before he himself understood them. "Well you have to be something", he finally choked out. "My family is coming home any minute, and they won't keep a amnesiac cripple even if he does have special powers." The moment he realized the possibility, his tone turned serious. "And as much as I'm impressed by you and your powers, I won't let you harm them."

Two more hollow breaths of contemplation were his answer. Impossible to tell whether this man of darkness was scorned, contemplating, or amused by the notion that Sedriq would _let _him do anything.

"Then for now, at least", he finally said. "I will be that which your people perceive me as. We have a deal."

Having overcome the fear of the helmet and mask, he had no trouble clasping his hand into a bulky black glove, and shaking on it.

-

The jungles of Whrede were crying today. They mourned the passing of the Gand that had lived there for weeks at a time, and Zurxix's pet cried along with it.

Asaajj Ventress lay knelt in the middle of the rain, atop the peak from which she had finally spotted her craft half-sunk in the mud and muck. Even a raised hill such as this one was being weathered down by the beating rain. Asaajj knelt in the storm but did not give way like the rest of the earth around her.

She'd had a few days to reflect on the knowledge Zurxix had desperately droven into her bare skull at the moment of his death- his final request, as it were. The threat he'd sensed, no matter how distant it was… she knew it was real.

More droplets trickled down her closed eyelids, tickling them as though inviting them to open and see the plantlife that, even soaked with rainwater, remained beautiful in the departure of the planet's shroud of ammonia mist.

Her natural response to the request had been one of base anger. She hadn't signed on for this, hadn't signed on for anything of the sort. Just a simple mission, then peace on a world of her choice, far, far away from Count Dooku, the Sith, treachery, and intergalactic war.

_One thing after another. Master Narec always said there was a balance to the Force beyond Light and Dark, so when is it going to turn in my favor? When will the battle end? **When** will this accursed galaxy let me rest?_

Beyond words for the moment, she settled for a scream of pure feral anger at the jungle around her, loosening the moisture cupped in the ferns. Didn't help. All this life was still there around her, taunting her with its brevity. Fifty years down the road, this jungle would no longer exist, unless she did something about the threat.

_One damned soul, not even a full-fledged Sith. I don't want this, I don't need this. Let Lord Sidious and his cronies handle it-_

-Except for the fact that Sidious didn't know. Too wound up in his own dark medititations to replenish his own power, he had not caught the slightest glimpse of the coming threat. He might not ever, until it was too late.

Lord Sidious would never listen to her, an anger-driven survivor from the losing side of the Clone Wars. But he _would_ listen to Skywalker, the man he had twisted into his most devoted servant.

Both eyes drew wide. That was it, then. Pass the knowledge onto Skywalker, let him and his Empire deal with it. Anyone else but her. She could still feel Skywalker's prescence out there, an entity of hatred nearly as strong as she, although dimished. _His encounter with Reyne A'kla must have really drained him, _she decided. _Serves him right. He's not going to be able to rest on Chandrila for long._

Then she closed her eyes once again, and felt the texture of her simple snub craft, lifting it from the bog inch by inch.

-

Rolan Wesk sipped his drink and shivered, letting it soak his beard and skin. _However many thousands of years ago some guy developed caf, he must have been thinking about nights like this._

Not that Chandrila was necessarily a cold planet. The planet had not seen snow since long before it's settlement into one of the major population centers in the Inner Rim. In fact, astronomers had had every reason to predict that it would get _warmer_ as the galaxy aged, positioned as it was near it's star, far closer than Ichosar.

Nights like these, though, made up for their rarity with strangely ferocious winds. The rare winds- nightingales, some called them, since they only occurred in the dead of night- could whistle up Chandrilan civilian dress and set a man's legs quaking before they heard it gathering in the dark. Rolan was extremely grateful for any kind of shelter no matter who provided.

Give it one or two millennia, and the heat of the sun would make these rapid nightingales nothing more than a pleasant summer breeze. Give it ten millennia, and Chandrila might become a desert world as sparse as Tatoonie. But that really wasn't the sort of thing a man in Rolan Wesk's position thought about too much, even when lookout duty gave him the opportunity to look at the stars.

What he really preferred to think about was how to keep his hands steady while holding his mug out in the freezing cold wind outside the warehouse. He knew he wasn't much to look at physically- a worn jacket and ripped pants that was all he could afford, a mangy beard that matched his hair when it wasn't soaked in blissfully warm caf such as now. But he took some consolation in knowing the guys inside the warehouse were pretty much in the same boat.

Which, of course, was what had brought them to work for Boss Lars.

Another thing he'd tried not to think about too much. Every time he caught a glimpse of the only well-dressed man of this outfit, he had to keep his mind from wandering off, wondering what exactly Boss Lars had been doing since his last visit. He knew Lars ran Spice- that was usually what they were carrying in the shipments- as well as a number of similar illegal stimulants. You didn't get as well connected as he was with just that trick, though, Rolan knew that much.

He'd even heard rumours that Lars himself had come off some grubby moisture farm on Tatoonie- it just went to show how far connections and a complete lack of conscience could get you. _Which is why I'm not there yet_, he decided with a mix of resignation and contempt. _I like to think at the heart, I'm still a decent guy._

And look at what that had got him, native son of Chandrila: poverty on a planet with record lows for it, a job working under a man he secretly loathed, and lookout duty outside the warehouse with the blisteringly fast nightingales, while the others loaded crates on the haulers and tried to look busy and stay warm inside corrugated metal.

A deep breathing sound interrupted this train of thought, and Rolan looked up. He'd never heard a sound like it before- a sort of heavy, rhythmic breathing noise. He had just nailed it down to the noise of respirator when another noise overtook it- a level hum like the engines on their haulers at low power.

Roland checked both sides of the gate, certain he would find one of the guys holding a mechanical respirator boosted from the hospital, cracking up with laughter. "That's a pretty pathetic joke, guys", he said gruffly into the darkness, swinging the gate over to check behind the first hauler. "Can't you come up with-"

No one there, and he couldn't pin down the respirator's sound direction. Then it occurred to him the importance of the noises that he _couldn't _hear anymore. More specifically, the lack of men and one motley cargo droid straining to lift heavy crates and move them onto the haulers. The sound of old crate metal, of men sweating to do their job… none of it was there.

Rolan took a few steps further into the warehouse. "Guys?"

At that moment, the respirator noise returned, louder than before. Likewise for the hum, the location of which he placed too late to stop. Something behind him, massive, too big to be human…!

Instantly, his lungs failed him. The figure crouched behind the gate hadn't been there a moment ago, but now a red beam of light reflected off the polished black plating that coated his entire frame.

That was all he saw, before learning that there were indeed things faster and more lethal than a nightingale.

-

M: Only two months overdue! A winner is me!

Seriously though, the only real excuse I can offer for being so late is that I had problems getting the disparate sections to click. Even after a month of revision, I think this is the weakest of my chapters so far, a trend that will (hopefully) change in the more battle-oriented sixth chapter. Spare time is a rare commodity indeed nowadays, but I will do what I can to stay on schedule.

Thanks and apologies to all reviewers!


	7. Anakin

Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. Only the five Forgotten characters were created by me, along with the planets Ichosar and Whrede.

-

Six: Anakin 

-

"Enemy sighted, sir."

From his seat at the back, Trasshk leaned forward to the front viewport of his personal Blastboat, trying to discern the hostile craft against the vibrant green-white backdrop of Chandrila. The servant seated in front of him was too intent on the new arrival to move out of the way, and Trasshk never saw the other craft until it flashed by theirs.

He hadn't expected to meet with one of the Sith assassins so soon, before he'd even arrived on the planet. That surprise, combined with the sonic boom of the smaller craft's wake, nearly shook the Transdoshan overlord enough to topple him to the deck. Instead, he simply banged the top of his head off the roof- even the raised ceiling wasn't enough.

Beside him in the other seat, Gran Lassau let out a short chuckle, the only real sign of emotion Trasshk or his chief pilot had seen from the mystery guest Lon had sent them. Hooded as he was in Palpatinesque black robes and organic black body armor, a single white eye was all they had managed to see of his face.

Quickly regaining his posture, Trasshk reached out with the Force and an immediate response. "That's the one all right", he gargled in primitive basic. _Not Vader- the one that killed Zurxix. A little girl?_

Whatever race or sex Vader's partner was, she wasn't a bad pilot, Trasshk observed from his seat. She had already taken note of the fact that military Blastboats were not common sights in Chandrilan airspace, and immediately thrown all discretionary power into her engines, heading down the gravity well in record time.

Now seeing the small craft recede before his eyes, he touched the pilot again and licked his lips. "Give me primary weapons control."

The pilot knew better than to question the dexterity of his species. The firing controls lowered themselves into his lap, casting an infrared glare over the planetary backdrop while contrasting the girl's ship in bright green.

Before aiming, Trasshk looked over at their guest for a moment and snarled. "I don't suppose you'd want to make yourself useful and operate the missile launcher?"

Lassau did not even speak. He just turned away, content to watch the dogfight through his single white eye, now shaped more like a slender line contouring around what Trasshk presumed was the left side of his face, shrouded in darkness.

Adrenalin snapping his claws back to the fire controls, he raked the targeting cross over the fighter's engines, which had already receded enough so as to obscure the figure of the fighter with ion wash. Any pilot could tell you that a straight dive to escape the Blastboat's powerful weaponry would be even more suicidal than simply sitting still- no craft that small could take the G-forces of such a descent.

Instead, Lord Vader's ally was opting to skim the atmosphere of the planet while descending at a steady rate. That meant he still had time to tag those three engines jutting out from her aft, each one offering a bright target for Trasshk's sensitive eyes.

It was his pilot, not Trasshk himself who let out a yelp of surprise once the first salvo was unleashed- the enemy fighter zipped left before the shots crossed half the distance between them. She turned that dodge into a nimble roll, using that spinning motion to lose her own missile weapons at zero thrust.

As Gran Lassau looked on, Tasshk managed to vaporize each lethal missile before it came too close, giving his real target time to gain a handful of meters on them. Again she jinked further left, but this time he was ready; both beams cleaved the air where the small ship was headed, then Trasshk flipped over, taking his eyes off the firing screen for only a second, and painted the center of his reticule for missile fire.

The leftmost engine flickered and died, but the rest did not come off as flawlessly. The rest of Trasshk's initial volley, meant to spook the pilot into fleeing back to the right- back into the path of their single-shot missile launcher- was soaked up by the familiar green hue of shields.

The Transdoshan suppressed a content snarl. _Must've gotten lucky on that first shot. Three missiles left. _"Get us closer, you useless meatwad. I can barely see her."

What followed that was several more minutes of terrifying dodging back and forth in the stream of the Blastboat's lasers, each time either maneuvers or shields foiling Trasshk's shots. At the same time, the trail of smoke, the way the craft now hung to the left was unmistakable. By now, the outline of Chandrila's largest continent was clear even to the human pilot's weak eyes. He was going to have one more shot at this, or-

"Sir!", the pilot exclaimed. "We have more incoming bogeys! Imperial craft!"

Trasshk did not need to crane his neck- he could feel the eyes of a score of trigger-happy Clone pilots upon them, ready to fire. _Damn it. Should've guessed they'd investigate this little party. _"Give me ten seconds, then take us down at full speed. Wait… never mind."

_There_. His senses synched perfectly with his claws, peeling off a volley of laser fire just the pilot had the shock of seeing Imperial craft launching from their mothership, which looked like the kind of angular _Victory-_class Star Destroyer seen at countless battles at the end of the Clone Wars. As a result, her timing was thrown off- he also sensed her white hot frustration when the center engine blew apart.

The craft leaned heavily to the left and began to drop. Trasshk relaxed his missile launcher, sat back and smiled toothily, watching the craft twist and burn. She would never regain control with just one auxiliary engine, and even if the Imperials were so inclined, he doubted they could tractor her craft in time. An almost disappointingly easy kill.

Green laser fire flashing past their canopy reminded him that they were not out of danger yet- the eyes of the Empire were upon them. "Get us out of here", he rasped, "but keep a sensor lock on the other craft as long as you can. I want to see it burn with my own eyes."

Returning his attention to the firing screen, he peered closer, trying to keep the rapidly receding flare in sight. Once or twice an Imperial fighter would flash by, but he could still make out that flare against all the green and brown below. No doubt the craft would end up a black scar on a grassy field. _Or maybe…_

Even Gran Lassau could not completely ignore how wide Trasshk's eyes suddenly grew out of shock. He would never be able to make out the flare by simply gazing out the view port as he did now, but Trasshk could still see the fighter's engine assembly, and more importantly, which direction it was turned.

"How in the…!", he shouted, and then caught himself, realizing the obvious answer considering who he was dealing with. _The Force. The little wretch must have used Force telekinesis to stabilize her craft mid-descent!_

All at once, the flare blurred into nothingness amongst the colors below after the pilot made a particularly tight turn to avoid laser fire. Thrown backwards into the bulkhead, Trasshk hissed in a combination of annoyance with the bulkhead and annoyance with himself for not finishing the female pilot off when he'd had the chance. "Pilot, take us down. She's still alive."

Like Trasshk just moments ago, the pilot could not mask the frightened surprise on his face as he turned around. "Take us _down_, sir? But the Imperials are onto us! They've got a full squadron trained on us already!"

Then he remembered who he was talking to and flinched away, expecting death. Instead, his master gave back his toothy smile. "We won't be down there for long- just drop me off lower-atmosphere. You don't think you can do it, then get off my ship so I can do it myself."

The nervous pilot gulped once, still digesting just exactly what it was his master was preparing to do. "Alright… sir. I'll open the hatch once we're within sight range of the wreck. Please don't kill me if the Imperials vape us before then."

Seeing no reaction from Lassau, Trasshk settled back into the cushions, gathering his power- his anger- from a bottomless well of natural feral instinct. "They won't. Just get us down there fast, meatwad."

Strangely enough, the next few minutes of combat saw a record number of piloting errors committed by Imperial pilots. When put through his debriefing, the clone flight leader could only attribute his squadron's sudden panicked beeline away from their target to the extremely convincing mental impression that they were flying down the gullet of a ravenous space slug.

-

Sedriq Uso snapped his personal holoviewer shut slowly and regarded Lord Vader with a mixture of awe and surprise. Lying down on the dusty workbench, once again pretending to be Sedriq's droid science project, the object of these emotions could only wait for him to give his first impressions words.

"I… don't know what to say", he finally admitted lamely over the repeating puffs from the respirator. "You've done it. You've brought the legend to life for one night. Three smuggling operations disrupted, two murders prevented…" Drawing closer to the cybernetic form on the bench, his eyes darkened. "All the perpetrators dead from microscopic cuts on their bodies."

The Force had not wiped Vader so clean that he failed to understand the gravity of it. "A personal jading, I fear. I have never had any degree of patience for criminals of any sort. I remember being owned by a slaver trader at one point in my youth. The first smuggling operation…"

Sedriq closed his eyes, knowing what he must have felt. "Slaves. The pols like to have us believe Chandrila is a utopia among a galaxy of corruption and thievery. So much for that theory."

Touched by the bitterness in his tone, Vader sat up. "It is not without some merit, Uso. Most of the people here are decent- I can sense it in their hearts and minds. But even if there was such a planet so perfect and pure, economy requires that it tether itself to the rest of the galaxy."

Uso nodded soberly at the upraised helmet in front of him as though facing an ugly truth head on. "Thus it becomes corrupt. That's so wrong, though."

"Correct", answered Vader. "It is. I intend to root out the primary source of this planet's corruption at the source tomorrow, a man named Lars. He was the man behind the slave and Spice trade in these sectors."

Sedriq drew closer, looking as though he was just becoming aware that he shared his house with a murderer. "So you'll kill him, just like that?"

This accusation came back at him in a wash of dark anger from Vader, projected into his towering stance and voice. "Is there a better way to deal with such criminals? The courts of any planetary government are subject to question. The prisons of Kessel rehabilitate no one and spread their vices to the innocent! This is faster, simpler."

Short of breath, Sedriq involuntarily backed away, getting his back against the door before Vader softened his focus. "I am not your living legend, Uso, however much I may try to be. That is a story for children who have no concept of death. That is what I will bring to all the criminals of Chandrila, until I regain who I truly am."

With that, he turned back to the business at hand- fixing his damaged armor. Having already seen the other's apt mechanical skills, Sedriq, walked out of the workshop, once again fearing Vader the way he ought to.

_At this rate_, he thought dismally to himself as he saw his little sister come in from school, the_ Jedi will soon be joining the Black Knight of Justice in the realm of fairy tales._

-

She had trashed the fighter, permanently this time. Embedded as it was in a slender bluff of rock, Asaajj knew that she would not be leaving the planet the same way she had arrived in.

The Force telekinesis had actually given out right as her ship had pierced the clouds. Try as she might, she couldn't quite hold on to the focused anger needed to hold her craft level under such powerful gravitic stresses. Then the ship had twisted end over end, she had lost all semblance of concentration on the Dark Side, returning to frantic piloting duties in order to make a controlled crash-landing on this bluff.

From the upraised position of the right engine, twisted out of alignment, she had caught a better view of exactly where she had crashed. The bluff was the start of a series of similar outcroppings that grew more numerous as they extended out to sea, mixing themselves with the sand. To the other side lay endless green flats, occasionally parted by narrow valleys buffered with gray shale, but she had sensed many lifeforms further along that way- almost certainly the pearl-white city she'd glimpsed during the descent.

Skywalker was there too, she decided from the twisted engine framework. He- along with thousands of other people- was only half a day's distance if she ran the whole way. All in all, she could have had it much worse; Chandrila did not bear the slightest semblance to her homeworld, nor the steamy jungle she'd left behind trying to get here.

Tipped off by the impossibly loud drone of Imperial fighters, she huddled down into the cockpit for a moment, letting them pass. No doubt the local authorities had been stirred up by the Skipray Blastboat, along with her fighter, lighting up the sky with lasers and missiles. The flyboys would take a few more passes, then get bored and go back to the Star Destroyer. Until then, she would have to wait and take inventory.

Asaajj closed her eye in the seat, remembering a time when she would do this sort of thing every day, evading mercenary fighter patrols from the local warlords, using whatever cover was necessary. Sometimes she would have to slink along in ditches for weeks, the fighter's engines- quieter and more buzzy than the Imperial's but no less ominous- serving as a constant reminder of the danger waiting just fifty meters higher.

_If you stuck your head up then, it would be removed_. She's seen this firsthand a few times; folks would panic, desperate to stretch their ankles after crawling for days on end with little food or rest. Ignoring all the warnings of their fellows, they would stand, and two things would happen- the fighters would swoop around and strafe such an inviting target, or more likely the leader would cut the offender down himself to maintain their cover.

Ky Narec had not taken her away from those days, but he had made life worth living again, for a time. After that had come an abyss of grief and rage so deep that even she's known her sanity was slipping, and after the abyss came Master Dooku.

_There_. Her time was now. A wingpair of fighters had just come by in what looked like a tired survey that did not expect to locate anything- it was just for show. Either they were done, or they had more pressing business elsewhere.

Just to be safe, she stuck to the bottom of the valleys like a conduit worm for the first two hours. Back in the trenches, back to the place where her endless well of anger had been forged in the fires of the warlord's hatred… but this time, Master Narec was not by her side.

It took Asaajj a moment to realize that she was not imagining the buzzing of a non-imperial engine solely from memory. She felt it now: a mind of malice and power, accompanied by another one rapidly approaching absolute terror. She tensed up, closing down her own awareness to make herself that much harder to find.

It had to be the wretches who'd ambushed her earlier in the Skipray- the Force-sensitive one she felt now had used his talents before while firing on her. This presence was almost like her own in its anger- a carefully tendered crucible that seemed bottomless, that could murder everyone in sight when it was vented. This was definitely _not _a Jedi.

Not a Jedi, not a Sith. A Forgotten, then? 

Whatever kind of Force-user was trying to kill her, she would have to make certain that he ended up disappointed and dismembered. Asaajj reached back for her twin red Lightsabers, and-

-sprawled to one side to avoid a hulking mass that seemed the size of a bipedal Acklay. Its claws gouged the dirt where she'd stood, tilting two glowing reptilian eyes to track her. In a valley this narrow, someone that big could effectively block the pass.

Desperate to get out of the dark space, to see what it was she was truly up against, Asaajj leaped skyward, boosted by her power. Her attacker followed, clawing his way up and out of the valley in a less dramatic fashion.

Standing amidst hundreds of fronds of blowing grass long enough to tickle her cheeks, she could now see him in full detail. He was easily the biggest Trandoshan Asaajj had ever seen, towering over her short stature. While his dark green skin looked proof enough against any conventional weapon, he was also covered in tight-fitting combat armor of a type she couldn't recognize, a type that seemed almost organic in it's creases and joints.

The bone-gray battle armor covered everything but the Forgotten's head, feet, and sharp claws, which he flexed delicately as if warming them up. Asaajj searched him for several more seconds, then barked out a throaty laugh. "I imagine your claws would intimidate most. But you you were a fool to come here without a Lightsaber."

"You were a fool to come here, period", the Trandoshan gnashed back at her in a messy Basic. "And I have all the weapons I need here with me."

That, it seemed, was the extent of whatever conversation the massive Forgotten felt like having. _Just as well_, Ventress thought in cruel pleasure, gathering her strength along with both sabers, _boring conversation anyway._

She lunged. The tall grass was an annoyance, but her soaring leap cleared it easily, heading straight for the Trandoshan's head with both sabers.

Still grinning crookedly, he leaned backward almost far enough to let her pass right over him. Instead of allow that to happen, though, he leaned to one side, moving his left arm up to reach and close over her face at it's full extension- which turned out to be about a foot longer than Asaajj had guessed. Before she could react to this, he tossed her backwards like a rag doll, knowing that she didn't need to see in order to lop his arms off.

Something warm fell from her head to her breast. Blood. Even in that brief moment of contact, he'd gouged her face with his nightmarish talons before releasing. She now sported four near-identical wounds there. Swearing to not let it happen again, she charged back lopsided, this time with one saber for protection, the other to strike.

Trasshk- once again leading with his left arm- dropped to all fours before slashing out for the handle of the first saber. This time, she was ready. Asaajj guarded the hilt of that saber with the other, then switched stances when he curved his swipe to the other hilt. Now her two sabers were held in a cross-guard, which she advanced forward towards the larger fighter's neck.

Then, to her amazement, the armor crisped and boiled instead of melting away entirely. While the blunted velocity of the strike sent both sabers upward towards Trasshk's head, this was all the time he needed to grab both hilts, stopping them a few inches away from his hide.

"Doshkok Armor", he snarled gleefully through the steam wisp, his voice not betraying any of the signs of exhaustion Asaajj was feeling cramp her arms. "Made from Trandoshan hide marinated in cold brine for generations, so it's harder and stiffer than duracrete. Reserved only for those who have earned the highest favor of the Scorekeeper."

Not wanting to be outdone, she bit down to restore feeling to her trembling mouth. "You… are… a fool! Do you really think you can stop… two Sith lightsabers with just your claws?"

She didn't hear Trasshk's answer. Instead, a jumble of images buried her senses. It only took her a moment to lock down what their common denominator was- death was milliseconds away.

So she leaned back, losing even more ground in the struggle over her two saber handles. And even as she registered that he had angled his right arm over top of her own hilt and pointed it at her neck…

That right arm exploded, projecting a familiar red glow out to where her head had been just before. Judging by the look on his face, he was a bit surprised to see her dodge backwards, out of the reach of his lightsaber. She took the opportunity to grasp both of her own sabers and roll away from him with the kind of speed only Force-users could know.

Now she could grasp the danger before her in it's entirety, not completely believing what it was. Trasshk's right claw had simply exploded- turned into a faint cloud of blood molecules after being fried by his hidden lightsaber. The saber itself was massive, nearly the width of his real arm, easily twice the thickness and length of either of hers. As for it's handle, she could see a ring of metal at the end of the stump, which would continue on into the usual apparatus, which could be activated by remote.

A dangerous gamble, but one that had nearly decapitated her before she could react. Judging from the way those images from a possible future had been frantically pressed into her mind, it could only have been Zurxix who had warned her.

"That's ten", Trasshk chortled over the wind and the hum of his saber. "That's the tenth time I've unleashed this weapon- only for exceptionally worthy prey."

"Painful, of course", Asaajj acknowledged, fully catching on. "But now I remember-Trandoshans regenerate body parts a lot faster than humans or my people do. So you'll have your right arm back, grown over the blade, in about a year."

Trasshk waved his huge saber back casually, making ready to strike. "Five months, actually- fine control over the Force speeds that up quite a bit. Now die."

He took the first slash across the grass, calling to attention once more how much longer the reach of his weapon was. Parrying the weapon only helped so much- Trasshk's lightsaber was so large and powerful that it took both of her smaller sabers to ward it off, and even then just barely. Never before had her weapons felt so heavy in her arms, while her reptilian opponent seemed more invigorated than ever by the loss of his right arm. The fact that he was actually _smiling_ as he fought only deepened her fury.

That was fine. Fury was her friend. It was the primary source of all Dark Side Power, and what little of her concentration Asaajj could spare noticed that she was on the verge of giving in to it, of surrendering all sentience to raw animal anger. Already, her vision was pulsing with blood red lines drawn across it. Trasshk's massive red saber seemed to fill her vision, draining her conscious mind of the will to fight just as it wore down her stamina with blow after blow.

By the time their fight came to the edge of an outcropping near the beach Asaajj had spotted earlier, her conscious mind was too tired to resist or intervene. Screeching a renewed call of rage, she slashed back into the dance, spinning around the larger target like an insane mynock. Another slash mark steamed into Trasshk's back, only stopped by his armor, and then she leaped skyward for the final blow.

All Trasshk had to do was take two steps forward. This left her to land on the very edge of the outcropping, and take one second to prevent herself from tumbling off the edge of the sea cliff. One second was all he needed to pivot on his footclaw and slash directly into Ventress' left arm.

Her scream modulated between absolute rage and blinding agony. Because Trasshk's saber was so wide, it dissipated the molecules of flesh it touched instead of severing a hand from the arm. Instead, the hand and the weapon it held exploded in much the same way Trasshk's right had moments before, instantly cauterizing in the heat.

Clutching a smoldering stump, her footing was the last thing on Ventress' mind. Dropping the other saber, she fell with a final scream. Not wanting to be denied the chance to finish his prey off personally, Trasshk peered over the side and saw nothing but seawater.

He cursed in his native tongue, switching the saber off. The tide must have come in while they were fighting. Nature had deprived him and the Scorekeeper of a rightful kill, and not for the first time.

But really, no matter who did the deed, he could be certain that Asaajj Ventress never had, and now never would, pose a threat to him.

-

The dream came to him again as it always had since the incident, uniform only in it's utterly haphazard sprinkling of images, feelings, and sounds. Even dreams, ever a product of the memory, were fragmented.

_Padme_. The woman he had loved was the sole anchor in a sea of unknowns. All throughout, he had hung onto those memories tightly, leaving them faded but not removed, like so much of his life had been. He also remembered why it was she was not here with him now.

More than came with her, though. There was another face, another life irrevocably connected to hers, that appeared whenever Vader tried to think about her. The brash young Padawan, Anakin Skywalker. Was he still alive, waiting out there in the galaxy, longing for his mate?

He'd sensed an angry presence in the Force closing on him in his waking moments. Perhaps that was Anakin, come to avenge her by killing Vader. But there was something wrong with that picture as well, something missing in the larger puzzle.

In fact, it was a large piece missing. He'd tried going there several times, to try and retrieve it, only to be met by a buffeting wall of emotional and physical pain that drove him back every time. The wall divided whatever life he'd lived until the incident from the rest of it. Now he had come through a torrent of broken memories to march right through that wall.

_This time, I am going to do it_, he told himself. _Focus your hatred to block out the pain, and I will regain who it is I once was._

One step, and the aches were already eating him alive. A sensation like burning lava all along his back was always the wall's first line of defense, and he cooked in it. _Concentrate!_

The lava didn't want to let him go, even when he arrived at the second layer- the place where he'd been stopped the last time he'd slept. The second layer was a dark wind. It chilled the lava, somehow failing to dissipate the lava's heat even as it froze and cracked over him. Yes, the power of hatred was carrying him far indeed… but he was still miles away from being complete.

The third layer struck now, as fast as its source. It was shock- the shock of electricity, and shock at one' own deeds. Somehow, the two were connected by an event he'd forgotten. It was the worst one yet, combining with the other two to complete the symphony of pain. _Too much pain… can't see…_

He might yet have succeeded, had it not been for the scream that suddenly intruded into his consciousness- a shrill female scream, nothing like Padme's. That was all it took to break the intense barrier of dark power Vader had woven around himself to protect from the pain, and the wall chose that moment to bounce him back out of it's radius, back out into daylight.

He woke. Once again, the red glare of the lenses awaited him and the afternoon. He sensed another life form in the room and, expecting it to be Sedriq Uso, turned his head to find him.

What he found instead was someone much smaller and younger, standing just short of the workbench even at full height. Curly black hair framed an innocently curious face, and he recognized her as Uso's younger sister.

His turn had to have been the only reaction she had observed from what Uso had wanted his family to believe was a droid. He could certainly play the part and just lie there, motionless, until Sedriq returned from work and shooed her away. But that, somehow, didn't seem entirely satisfying.

Before he could make a decision either way, she made a giddy leap for the bench, managing to grab on and climb halfway up onto it and him. Looking closer at the electronics on his frame, she asked "what kind of droid are you?".

He thought about it a moment, going over what possibilities he remembered- how much the incident had crippled him, even in something as simple as this! "A swordmaster model. Sedriq Uso built me to train him."

It felt strangely easy for him to lie to a child, and he felt devoid of any compassion for her, almost as though what remained of his heart was playing along with the subterfuge. While not a droid, he certainly would count as a cyborg in all accounts.

Sedriq's sister wrinkled her little nose, noticing the respirator's noise. "You sound sick. Is my brother doing a good job building you?"

"…An interesting question. He has tried to build me to his own specifications, but those failed. Perhaps he has left me to complete the final stages myself."

She laughed lightly. "That's dumb. A droid can't make itself." Straightening up, she pushed herself back off of the bench and looked up at him. "I'll talk to him about it. He's never made a droid before now."

"Wait."

She stopped expectantly halfway to the door, and Vader cursed himself for halting her. What was he supposed to say? 'Don't tell him you were talking to me?' No matter what he said, Uso would find out that his sister had been innocently talking to a murderer as though nothing was wrong.

When that happened, heads would roll.

He sighed. "Never mind. Please go." Perhaps it was time that he set out to kill Boss Lars- he doubted he would be welcome again in this home.

-

M: Biggest chapter yet, yeah! I didn't even mean for it to be, it just kind of grew on it's own. Somehow, fight scenes always take more space than you'd think.

Private Note to Vong Hater's Review (How Telling!):

I really don't mean to sound fanboyish, but you are being very narrow-minded. If you were to claim the Yuuzhan Vong, who in fact **will** be playing a minor villainous role in this story, are not canon and therefore not real, then the entire Expanded Universe and all it's wonderful characters would have to be considered fake as well. At their inception in Vector Prime, the YV were a breath of fresh air to a genre that was growing increasingly stale. I would rather see an innovative new nemesis than the 400th faceless Imperial bureaucrat ineffectivelytrying to take the high ground against the NR.

I'm guessing you hate the New Jedi Order series as a whole as well. I know that there is a core of fans that despise it for various reasons, but I personally found it to be a nice change of pace, if a little drawn-out. Finally, the reason the Vong do not exist in the Force was explained and resolved in the final two books.

So there. Flames against the NJO/Vong will be disregarded in the future. Sorry.


	8. Fire, Lightning, and Ice

Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. Only the five Forgotten characters were created by me, along with the planets Ichosar and Whrede. Jomark and it's High Castle were created by Timothy Zahnduring his opus of SW, the Thrawn Trilogy.

-

_Seven: Fire, Lightning, andIce_

-

The last hit had sent stinging smoke of charred flesh into Asaajj's eyes, and opening them now would only expose her membranes to stinging seawater. So it was a good thing then, that even with a mind as muddled as hers had become, she could still choose and act by feel.

Obviously, the undertides had swept her out into the water. It was impossible to tell by how close she was to the beach she'd been swept off of, but her feet could not touch bottom when she tried to stand up in the rushing currents. All the same, she planted both feet downward to present a heavier object for the currents to move, fighting the urge to swim in any given direction- and the urge to breathe.

Gradually, the stinging went away. Asaajj opened one eye a crack, testing it, then opened both completely.

It was a good thing she hadn't tried swimming in the current- she'd been upside down. The direction she'd thought was up would have actually taken her still closer to the bottom, a seamless meshing of coral beds with sand gathered in every one of its pits. Now she could make out the glare of the moon upon the surface of the water, guiding her back to blessed oxygen.

Swimming faster and faster against the powerful current, she violently broke out on the surface, desperate to get a few breaths in before the undertow pulled her back under like a predator animal.

She had only had training for underwater environments a few times- most of the worlds she'd visited during the Clone Wars were barren, dusty places devoid of this kind of phenomenon. The current might go on for miles like this, forcing any poor soul who strayed into the sea down towards the bottom. How could she….?

Treading beneath the surface, she grimaced. _The Force, idiot. Telekinese yourself. _This effort called to attention just how much strength the last battle and the loss of her left hand had sapped out of her, as it took several tries to get it right. The memory of that giant Transdoshan's leering grin was what finally did it- it was enough to make her hover over the surface, casting a bizarrely distorted reflection beneath the moon's.

Oxygen had never felt so sweet, the water below never more like a filthy trap. Unable to maintain the power for the whole way, she settled for a frenzied paddle towards the cliff she had spotted, and the rocks clustered beneath it. The cliff definitely wasn't the one she'd fallen from- this one was taller, and was decorated with shrubbery up top that could have broken a fall. But that really wasn't a surprise, considering how long she'd allowed the current to carry her away from her pursuer.

Ignoring the bitter cold, she at last burst out of the sea and onto one of the rocks, clutching it with her single remaining hand, breathing deeply to get back what she'd lost.

_What my lungs lost_, she thought scathingly. _Keeping a grip on this thing isn't any easier than swimming with one arm- something I'll never get back!_

Renewed rage towards Trasshk filled her up along with oxygen. _Twice._ That was _twice_ now that maniac reptile had come withinatoms of killing her in a single day. It was one thing to open her eyes wide with fury and vow the most brutal revenge she could imagine… pulling it off was going to be another.

But still, despite the best efforts of Trasshk, Count Dooku, and Skywalker, she was still alive. Exhausted, crippled, drenched, mauled and pummeled…

But alive. That was all that mattered.

-

Boss Lars slid one of the small cups towards his guests and smirked. "He'll be here, all right. He may be a bastard, but he's punctual, I'll give him that."

Neither of his guests sat. The tiny little cup Lars offered would not have been more than a sip for present company anyway. Trasshk would be hard pressed to fit in the chair or to fit his jaws around the ivory cup… and Gran Lassau, still cloaked in black robes and armor, had not eaten or drunk anything in either of his allies' presences, so the possibility that he did not do either normally was not out-of-hand.

_At least now, I know he's not zoned out or something_, Trasshk mused silently, resisting the urge to scratch at the tiny slug nestled in his back, beneath his gray organic Doshkok Armor. Lassau had spoken up for the first time when he had been making ready to leap from the Blastboat, and then again when he had returned sporting two lightsaber scars his armor hadn't entirely stopped.

According to Lassau, the slug he'd given him would numb and heal his injuries even faster than the Trandoshan regenerative process with its slime. So far, all he'd felt was a mild chill back there.

Just as ever, there was still so much that he and Lon didn't know about their 'ally', namely how it was that he showed up invisible to Lon's strongest mental probe. Still cowled beneath a hood blacker than his body armor, he wasn't telling.

The man they'd heard the rumor from, by contrast, affected the illusion of being completely open and honest. He had sandy brown hair cut into a something approaching the clean flat top favoured by Imperial navy brass, and two small blue eyes framing a thin mouth that left much of his large face blank of many features. Despite his ties with the overbloated Hutts, Boss Lars apparently understood that physical fitness was one of the best ways to keep one's underlings from getting any ideas- Trasshk had employed that principle himself on T'gattok.

Normally, he would never have bothered to associate with any kind of local authority for a search like this. He would have tracked down his second piece of prey by trial-and-error and been done with it. It was only under Lassau's suggestion that they were here, in an attempt to avoid a bloodbath that would inevitably attract more Imperial attention. Working here would let them find and kill Darth Vader and collect Boss Lars' handsome cash reward, at the same time avoiding risking the wrath of the empire, at least until the deed was done.

Deciding that Lassau had made enough decisions for one day, Trasshk took the lead in speaking to Lars. "If you're certain that he'll be coming for you tonight, then, we'll hunt him down. I suggest you remove your men from the premises- send them out for a night off, or something.

Lars paled slightly but did not sweat. "Send them all away? If he gets past you two-"

"He won't", Trasshk replied with a toothy grin. "And your men are so far out of their league here that they would only get in our way. You realize that we're on a planet that is disgustingly proud of its low crime and unemployment rate. By the time these men come to you for help, a lot of other people have passed them over for a job."

To their credit, the guards Lars had posted outside the small room made no move or sign- only the ripples of their resentment in the Force gave them away to Trasshk. Back in the room, he felt Lars' fear as he conceded. "Alright. I'll call the foreman, but you had better be right about this."

As Lars fiddled with his commlink, Trasshk allowed his awareness to spread further still, out beyond some dozen guards and to the city beyond. So many painfully innocent citizens, most of them asleep by now. Just for fun, he blasted one man's dreams with a vision of him devouring the man piece by piece. No surprise that he woke up in a cold sweat.

Then he felt it. A tremor in the Force from the emotions of a single man, growing more distinctive with time…

"Snap it up, human", Trasshk spoke to Lars again. "He's just about on your front door." When Lassau reacted, casting his gaze around the room as if expecting Vader to pop out of the walls any second, the Trandoshan placed a claw on his arm.

"If you were thinking of assisting me, don't bother", he hissed to the cloaked figure. "As you may have seen from my spar with the girl, I work best alone."

Frusturatingly, he couldn't tell what Lassau's emotional reaction to this was. Instead, he simply extrapolated from what he imagined Lassau was feeling. "Let this serve as an object lesson to you then, Gran, and watch from afar. In this holohorror, I _am_ the monster."

-

As it had many times before, the red glow of Vader's saber, instead of illuminating like a glow rod, seemed only to exacerbate the feeling in the night that all sentient creatures should be at rest right now. The stars were out tonight, and Vader wondered which one of them held the answers to who he truly was.

Of course, this deep in the white city of Chandrila, only a fraction of the stars were visible through his lenses, the rest obscured by buildings loaded with sleeping consciousnesses he could feel acutely even as they slumbered. The dreams and thoughts of the just, measured with those of the unjust. _It is only for the unjust that creatures like myself exist_, _to rectify their crimes._

He wasn't kidding himself. In appearance, he knew that he bore a universally-common guise of evil. The armor that kept him alive was the gist of man's nightmares, and most people here would look no deeper than that before drawing judgment.

What, then, was the alternative- paint his black armor white as Chandrila's great cities? From time to time, he had caught glimpses of a number of men that appeared to be soldiers garbed in bone white armor that the people here gave with a mixture of fear and obedience to. But for all their authority, they were never the ones in charge. Vader needed only to peek inside their minds to see the inner flaw- all the minds of those troopers were identical in their lack of any kind of individual initiative.

Something that he had no want for. He could decipher that much- he was neither a clone nor the minion of authority. He was unique, but the people all around him would only look as close as the armor to determine who was good or bad.

It was this initiative that saved him. By casually drifting past each sleeping soul with a gaze, he foresaw the danger and leapt to the side just in time, nearly crashing against the side of the ornamental bridge he'd just set foot upon.

_Perhaps_, he mused, _there is something to be said for first impressions after all. _The reptile that had nearly eviscerated him just now was proof of that. With it's small horns of bone and jagged needle teeth, it looked more like a depiction of a demon than anything else Vader could remember. It's own red lightsaber, extending from an ugly circle of metal in the reptile's right arm, was twice the size and thickness of his.

_Very well then, demon_, he decided. _Prepare to meet the black knight, backed by the power of the Force._ His first move was to glide back the way he had come with his weapon at the ready, in order to back the reptile further onto the white marble bridge, out to the point where a fall would be costly even if it was not compounded by the ravine at the bottom.

The demon seemed to give to that demand, but made Vader pay for the move with a counter-slash towards his helmet. Just blocking it, he knew he had never remembered feeling so much power packed into a single saber swing. Finesse, then, was the order of the night. He circled the larger fighter, raining down light blows to the keep that huge saber at bay while he observed it's user's style.

Responding with a snarl that Vader imagined would have intimidated or even stunned anyone else on this planet, the reptile took another huge mammoth swing at his chest. He stabilized his weapon, brining it up as a straight pole, stiff and unbendable as law.

Which is not to say law is underbendable- the blow still knocked him back a few yards, his black cape serving to cushion the landing. Still, now he knew something about this demon.

Namely that, like many of the larger sentients in the galaxy, he used brute force and immense size to back up every action he took, saber included.

He could not remember the identity or species of the speaker, but he knew a voice of wisdom had once reminded him that _size matters not._

He decided to let that impulse demonstrate itself. The next time the demon came around with a strong lunge, he squatted beneath it and the creature's right arm and slashed for the joint. To his amazement, the blade slid away as though it was a wooden stick pushing duracrete, sent off course and allowing the demon to escape with nothing but a few crisped scales. That brief shock gave the larger fighter time to step backwards, angling the blade down at Vader's skull.

Then the reptile, too, was surprised when he shot his other arm into the path of the metal tube that went up his right arm, stopping the saber in the process.

Now they were both hung up on each other's defenses: the demon's blade was halted just above the head, while it had grabbed Vader's saber arm in a strong wrestling grip to stop it from moving. Vader would have called it a stalemate except for the fact that the reptile had talons that could, with enough time and effort, penetrate his arm exoskeleton and lacerate whenever pitiful burned flesh lay underneath. The pressure was already sending his saber arm into spasms of pain.

Exerting his own pressure through the Force seemed to help for about three seconds- where other men had fallen, eyes bulging while clutching at their throats, the creature repelled it with a wave of equal power and gave a grin of pure feral joy. In just a few more moments, his saber arm would burst like an eggshell.

Strapped for energy-the energy to fight back- as he was, Vader didn't resist when some combination of Force-sense and instinct came together, triggered by a rather wet, if faint, breath-noise. Not his, but more like something breathing into a tube. That impulse thought it would be a good idea to slam his gloved right arm against the metal of the demon's saber enough to back him up and loosen his grip on the other arm, parting their grapple just enough to let a glob of dark blue venom pass through…

And enough to drop him to his knees for a fatal moment. Worse, the impact had shot the saber right out of his left arm and deactivated it. The Force called it back to his black glove before it hit the pavement, but he could see from the start that even the quick act of getting his lightsaber back in hand, switching it back on, and moving it into a blocking stance would provide too much of an opening for the massive bar of neon red that was the reptile's right arm.

Never mind gravity, there was nowhere to go but backwards over the rail.

-

Trasshk looked up in the direction thepoison had come from and scowled into the darkness. "Thought I told you to butt out, Gran."

The intended target of his accusation was perfectly blended into his perch on the bridge's primary strut, so that only his white left eye and his weapon could be seen against the backdrop even by Trandoshan eyes. "Poison. You looked like you could use some help. Lon asked me to watch out for you."

This only incensed him further. "You weasley, diseased little… I was about to have his pathetic human guts for garbage when you fired that thing. You almost hit me!"

A blink of the white eye was the only physical response Lassau needed. "Perhaps we could save this for another time, then? Our prey is out of sight and escaping fast."

Trasshk spun back to the rail he'd seen Vader fall over and knew his 'partner' was right. Vader's cape could prevent a fatal fall from this height and let him land in the river, or even atop one of the buildings down on the lower banks. Peering over the railing, he saw the so-called Lord of the Sith had opted for the latter.

_Hold on, _he interjected, _there's someone else with him…_**_her?_**

-

It hadn't taken long for Asaajj Ventress to locate who she was looking for once Trasshk and Vader had started heating things up- she could feel the raw power flowing forth from the two of them, providing the perfect means to catch up to Skywalker.

Now he stood before her, a bit the worse for wear but otherwise physically undamaged. She allowed herself to feel something like elation- Skywalker was her lifeline. If he failed, if he died, not only would she not receive the pay she'd been promised, but, given the nature of her employer, she wouldn't be long for this world either.

She also noticed that Skywalker still had his lightsaber gripped in his hands, active. Having lost both of hers in her last meeting with the Trandoshan behemoth, she could easily consider Skywalker's lightsaber something of a lifeline as well. _After all, the damn lizard hasn't lost his yet either. It's part of him._

She hadn't expected a thank-you for coming back to help, but neither had she expected a saber lunge stopped just short of her throat. "_Another_ assassin?", he growled dangerously.

It was a short time before she dared move her throat to try and talk some sense into him. "You… don't recognize me?"

He didn't need the saber to impress the fact that her life was in his hands- a telekinetic pinch of her throat was his first answer. "I do not. Who are you, and who is that alien Jedi?"

"He's… not a Jedi", she barely choked out. "He's a Forgotten. He came here to kill both of us, Skywalker. Do you remember nothing?"

Of course, she couldn't see any emotion through that gruesome black helmet, whereas hers were an open book even without the Force. From him, she detected nothing but confusion and anger.

"I remember fighting you.", he managed, letting Ventress dangle lightly on the choke. "On a jungle world."

"Yes, yes, on Yavin 4", Ventress said impatiently. "Don't you remember your master's orders, Skywalker? Don't you remember who you are!"

"Why don't you tell me, then? Tell me, or die."

This was going to be trickier than she had envisioned. Obviously, Skywalker had somehow lost all recollection of who he was, or why he was here, but lost none of his penchant for strangling those he didn't like. She'd fought him before, but Ventress was by no means an authority on the history of Anakin Skywalker. And she was on a tight time limit, too- Trasshk would be here any second now.

"You were the Chosen One of the Jedi", she finally spoke hoarsely, drawing on the bits of history she'd heard. "Now champion of the Empire. As I did, you came here on a mission for Senator Palpatine!"

What she got wasn't nearly the result she'd wanted. Re-accessing all these destroyed memories must have set off something because Skywalker immediately lost the malicious concentration that kept her partially asphyxiated. He clutched his helmet as if to squeeze the mother of all brain-aches out of it.

Breathing deep once, Asaajj looked around and hissed in displeasure- Trasshk had jumped the bridge and she could feel his presence closing on them. The only person who could stand up to him now had his mind scrambled. But, at least he'd picked up on that- he managed to look beyond his own pain and nodded vigorously towards another tall building. Where Asaajj could leap the gaps, Skywalker glided over them like a wraith.

That would keep them well away from Trasshk and his mystery partner, at least for a little while. Skywalker leaned against an airfoil, showing clear signs of mental exhaustion over his mechanical breathing. "Who am I, Ventress?"

Equally tired herself, she fixed him with a sullen look, now getting annoyed with this game. "I'd have thought you'd have figured it out by-"

She broke off, once again roughly choked from afar. Skywalker was up again, looming menacingly over her, his searing anger tightening the invisible noose. "_Not_ that name, the other one!"

"Pa… Pal… patine named you… Darth Vader…"

-

The name was a trigger. A key, that brought forth the three walls that divided everything Vader had been from everything he had become since killing Reyne A'kla.

Fire. He felt it crawling up his back, the boiling heat and lava of Mustafar. Where, for all intents and purposes, Anakin Skywalker had perished- burned to a crisp.

Lightning. The acid tang in the air that resulted from Palpatine's lightning, coupled with the raw emotional shock at the death of Master Windu.

Ice. A chill that froze his spine, when he's woken up in a cold sweat, wondering when his nightmares about Padme would turned to reality.

He had never wanted any of it to happen, and yet he could never deny the truth of what had happened, how everything had gone so horribly wrong. _No, _a part of his soul seemed to cry out, _I can't face that present. Too much pain. Too much sorrow. Let me stay here!_

But he had not lost so many memories so as to lack knowledge about why it was this way, and just where that whining came from. Besides, where was 'here'? A lifetime spent as a champion of a single planet, chosen over being champion of _the galaxy_?

Finally he made the gesture against all measure of pain, and the walls went down one by one, broken apart by the power of raw fury against his weakness.

_I must be strong; I can no longer whine or run away from the course I have set. I must see it through to its end, for I have nothing else left…_

Behind the black lenses, his eyes opened, once again whole.

The situation had changed.

While he had torn apart the locks on his memories Reyne A'kla had forged with her dying breath, Trasshk had appeared on the roof of the building. Without a saber, Asaajj Ventress had been helpless to stop him from advancing on his prey. He didn't see or feel the other one with Trasshk- the one with the poison-shooting eye- but he knew he had to be close by, waiting to jump in and help.

With detached interest, he noticed Asaajj had tried something new, something totally against all notions of fair saberplay- she had reached out with her hatred andcrushed the mechanical apparatus on Trasshk's right arm off, disabling his saber. It hadn't stopped him long- Asaajj was agile and ferocious, but she didn't have nightmare claws, or Doshkok armor thick enough to stop blaster bolts. Vader saw her fall to the ground, bleeding in several spots.

Which left just Trasshk and Vader, toe-to-toe. He recognized the demon's species now, along with the technology that composed his right arm. Asaajj had done a first class job telekinetically crushing the components that made up its core despite his resistance.

He still did not feel much for a battle-scarred Rattatak like her, but the fact remained that she, like Sedriq Uso, had helped him in his time of need. So she would not die- not if he could help it.

At last, Trasshk gave up on trying to reactivate his ruined saber arm- coaxing more energy out of whatever he used for a power core might result in an overload at the barrel stump. He was still preparing himself to a fight an opponent armed with a lightsaber when Vader tossed his to the side casually.

"I have something different in mind, alien", Vader said, deftly stepping between Ventress and Trasshk. "A capable creature such as yourself deserves better than a one-sided slaughter. So I will grant you a chance for victory."

Trasshk said nothing; he only swelled with indignation at Vader's gall for dictating the terms of their conflict. All the same, he made no move yet, merely swearing under his breath at the Sith Lord.

"My master has told me", Vader went on, "that one of the most powerful forces a sentient being can harness is the power of fear. We will test his theory."

With that, he followed Trasshk's lead and diverted all concentration to the coming contest. They had played it this before, Vader knew- Trasshk's screech earlier had been a blast wave, meant solely for the purpose of making other creatures lose all control of their relevant sphincters and run away. His opponent was also extremely adept at projecting images of absolute terror directly into the weak-minded, as he had done while dogfighting the Imperial navy.

This was not a true battle, but a game of intimidation. It was not a game he intended to lose.

Trasshk moved strangely; for a moment, Vader feared a strike from his claws. Instead, he shifted forward towards him, slowly leaving a hollow shell of scales behind him.

_He's shedding his skin_, Vader realized in alarm. _A natural process for reptilian species, but one that can be accelerated by the Force._

Now he had to actually crane his neck to see- Trasshk had grown significantly by leaving his old skin behind. Whereas he had been an imposing eight feet to Ventress' five and Vader's six, he had gained nearly a foot in this shedding, and now towered over both of the Sith.

Then came the screech. The helmet's vocal filters managed to shut out the worst of it, but burst open before the lengthy blast of sound was finished, filling the helmet with the acrid smell of overstressed hydraulics.

_Now_, he thought, _my turn._

Unlike his competitor, Vader didn't need to make any physical change. Few forms could have been more imposing, but he had had only a few moments to think of one.

What he came up with was blunt, simple, and typical of the Empire he would come to represent- _bigger is better_.

Anakin Skywalker would never have been able to do this. Neither would his prior stint as the 'Black Knight of Justice'. Only the monster inside of him had this power, the drive to become the most terrifying image he could think up. Only in Trasshk's mind did anything truly change.

…But change it did. He saw the armored figure in front of him expand, saw Vader's cybernetics, his billowing cape, and the helmet that sucked all feeling and caring out of his face. Suddenly, that cape seemed to blot out the stars, expanding along with its owner to ten feet in the Trandoshan's mind's eye.

Vader's show wasn't over. It was this aura of fear that separated him from the witless lackeys he'd seen running the Republic and Empire. By magnifying it and focusing it onto one person, he could unleash what he felt inside.

To Trasshk, the cape grew bigger and bigger. No stars left, only a black-armored titan over thirty feet tall, and the soulless whisper of his breathing.

He fell back, trying in vain to get away from the sight, to wipe it from his mind. "G-get away… get away from me, you monster!"

Odd words. He'd never spoken them before, only heard them on the lips of his own victims. But now he was finally out of his depth.

Forty feet of invincible black armor. Fifty. Sixty. More all the time, fed by a furnace with no limit. Fear such as he- as no member of his species- had ever felt before.

When the fatal Force choke came and took his life, it came as a relief. No creature could remain sane, after seeing what he had seen beneath that black armor...

-

"You've been a long time away", the wiseman said. His small, withered head returned to his own task. "Many are the stars you travel among."

Behind him, the hologram of Gran Lassau afforded him a slight bow. "I gave you fair warning that yours are not the only interests I serve."

"Yes." Looking sadly out a stone-wrought window and out to the distant sun, Lon, last of the Forgotten, knew that all too well. "We are all here to serve those that matter most to us- ourselves, in most cases."

Lon had spent a great deal of his time wandering the primitive stone hallways of the high castle of Jomark the past few days. What he had been about to attempt before receiving Lassau's return signal was proof positive of that, if anything. Lon had always been meant to be a well-known wiseman even among the Schintians- his species, and one generally considered to be overly analytical. His early-discovered Force-potential, rare as it was among reptilian species, had brought him more of the most valuble treasure according to his people- information and understanding of the galaxy around them.

All that, however, was far in the past. For the very action he was attempting now, his human Master had disowned him, made him leave the Jedi Order forever. _Almost a blessing now_, he noted silently. _If I had stayed, I would likely have been killed with the rest of the Jedi after Palpatine's Order 66. My seclusion has protected me from reprisals, until now…_

Now he was the sole survivor of the original plan to usurp Palpatine, and create a ruling council in his place. Instead of one Dark Jedi, the Republic- or Empire, or whatever they called it these days- would have answered to the combined will of five… but the rapid deaths of the other four Forgotten had forced him to greatly expand and revise the plan.

If he wasn't dead certain that Palpatine and his agents weren't coming to kill him anyway, he might still have reneged. The Emperor could damn well keep his domain if it meant Lon could keep his life.

_But no. Palpatine is as paranoid as he is ruthless right now, trembling at all those left to oppose him. He would kill me just to simplify the playing field, just as he did my comrades, along with all the Jedi._

Behind his neatly folded wings, Gran Lassau's holographic image gave a slight cough to prompt a response from the older alien. Getting none, he said, "With that said, I personally hope you know what you're doing, betting everything on Darth Vader. Sacrificing Trasshk is not an action to be made casually."

Lon's mind flashed back to the memory of the last conversation he'd had with the other reptile of the Forgotten. That was the last time he would ever see the bigger lizard, in holo or the flesh.

"It is not that much of a sacrifice. He was only meant to keep Palpatine's assassins busy for a time, until I could muster the strength I need. I assume he did so."

Lassau nodded, tilting his hood enthusiastically. "-And then some. I tried stopping him with my Plaeryin Bol venom, but he almost won even with the Sensislug slime dulling his reflexes the whole time. He nearly killed Vader, despite my best efforts to keep him from doing so- Trasshk was truly a strong warrior."

Ever an unconscious gage of his feelings, Lon's leathery wings went stiff at his words. "Quite a handy tool, that eye of yours. Where exactly did you find such an implant?"

Lassau looked at the floor, realizing he'd talked too much on that subject. "…From my people."

Both of his wings lost their rigidness, dropping to either side of Lon's scaly back. "Very well. Return to my castle when you can- I would appreciate having another helper besides my guards when Vader and Ventress get here."

Lassau bowed, deeper this time out of gratitude that Lon had not inquired further about his mysterious people. "As you wish. I only need to hook up with a few of my contacts before departure. I will be back with you soon."

The image faded, leaving Lon alone once again, to grapple with the moral conundrum of his greatest ability. He had been here for two hours now, trying to find the courage and reason for what he must do.

His life. That was what it really all came down to. As much as his Master's Jedi training had taught him not to place too much value on his own life or possessions, he couldn't help but fear for his life. If the choice was divided into two clear paths, he knew that deep inside he would cheerfully wipe out entire solar systems to preserve his own life. _That is my greatest flaw as a Jedi and a person- my irrational fear of death. _Being secretly ashamed of himself, and knowing that it was his greatest flaw, did nothing to curtail the effect it had on his actions.

So in the end, he had no choice in the matter. Lon took another deep breath and opened up the ability he'd sworn never to use except under the most extreme circumstances.

First, the azure-tinted rock around him opened up, and he found himself in the familiar cosmic nexus of the true Force. Every time he had come here, it eluded any kind of description- simply the luminous truth of what was lying beneath the physical bodies of every living being.

Every living being… except for Gran Lassau and his associates. Exactly how they lived without the Force was a puzzle he would save for another date. Right now, his objective was the biggest swelling of light in the revealed cosmos. This shining, nebulous globe seemed to extend a limitless distance in every direction.

While Lon's master had taught him a great deal about how to harness the Living Force, he preferred to think of this limitless white haven as the _Unliving _Force. It was the unification of every living creature that had ever died, and become part of the greater Force once again. There were more consciousnesses melded together up there than he could count in a lifetime, and this wasn't counting the ones that had completely surrendered their ego and become one with the beautiful shininglight at the end of their mortal lives.

Lucky thing that the consciousness he was searching for had only died about a month before- if he had waited a few months more, locating it amidst this many would be impossible.

_There. _He saw it again, floating alongside the freshly slain, almost as if comforting them. She was as Lon had seen her before, when he had come here the last time, and lost his nerve. Distorted, but every bit as beautiful as she had been in life.

It would be a terrible shame to tear her away from this ethereal beauty, to tear her out of the Force and back into the world of the living for his own purposes… but that was what he had come to do.

Sacrifices had to be made for the greater good, after all, and for the good of Wiseman Lon.

-

M: Another long one. At this rate, Chapter 8 going to be even longer, but oh well. I'm also not sure just how easy it is to deduce who it is that Lon is contacting, guess I'll learn when/if I get reviews (hint, hint).


	9. Apprentices

Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. Only the five Forgotten characters and the Schintian race were created by me, along with the planets Ichosar, T'Gottok,and Whrede.

-

_Eight: Apprentices_

-

In something approaching a bestial frenzy, Asaajj Ventress attacked her target. Armed once again with a burning red brand, she put the blade through several quick motions, each of them passing right through the intended target without a crackle of pulse static. Finally, she swept the blade directly through the head, and the projection dimmed in contrast to the room's regained lighting.

Across from her, Lord Vader had been standing straight up all the while, watching Ventress sweep his own Lightsaber through the crude hologram he had improvised for their purpose. The imaginary man had a completely blank expression, and clothing as bland as could be found anywhere on Coruscant. Anyone could tell that the Star Destroyer _Devastator's _saber practice system needed a lot of work, just like Asaajj.

Finished the exercise, the young Rattatak switched the blade off and snarled as if showing off for a zoo in front of an endless starscape. Her sole audience clasped his gloves, sizing up the woman as if seeing her for the first time. "Good. What you lack in raw power, you make up for with vigor and agility in saber combat. Your rage gives you endless energy to that purpose."

Still sullen, she tossed the only saber that had survived the previous night back to him. "That didn't help against that miserable lizard. Where did _he_ get his energy from, master?"

No particular emphasis on that new title, but he heard it all the same. He hadn't seen it at the time, but Asaajj had been partially awake last night, had been watching him terrify the massive Trandoshan warrior into total submission. For that, his rescuing of her, and the obvious gap between their saber skills, she had asked to be taught what he had.

Even if his memory was completely intact- there was still the occasional odd gap-, he would have been cautious. Anakin Skywalker had never had the opportunity to train any other Jedi. He still knew less about the Sith training than he did of the ways of the Jedi. _But thus far, this… this feels easier somehow. You just have to let go. Let goof everything._

Which was part of how he had deduced the answer to that question. "You must remember that Trasshk was a very powerful warrior", he said at last, letting the rebreather punctuate his statement. "Hate and rage come as naturally to his people as breathing. Less than a handful of Trandoshans have ever been considered as potential Jedi because of this… but they would all make excellent Sith. Their carnivorous wells of anger run as deep as yours from their birth, and he had something more than that to fuel his wrath."

Sitting, Ventress blinked. "What?"

"It was his joy that defeated you. As naturally inclined to anger as he was, he allowed himself to feel unsurpassed pleasure in the act of violent conflict. Because rage, Ventress, is not the only powerful feeling that can summon the power of the Dark Side- it is simply the easiest one for us to harness."

Asaajj looked into the mirrored sheen of Vader's saber, seeing annoyance in her own scarred reflection. "Which was why he was smiling. He was ecstatic at the chance to bring pain to someone- _anyone_- else."

Vader nodded. "_Any_ powerful emotion will do. When passion becomes obsession, when anger becomes hatred, when joy becomes pure ecstasy- then, the real power of the Force is unleashed. This was my Master's first lesson to me."

Finished with the saber for now, Asaajj placed it beside him and curled her fists in on themselves at the memory of the showdown. "That won't do me much good now, until I can find two new Lightsabers."

"One new Lightsaber.", Vader corrected sharply. Seeing her turn in surprise, he rose with his own weapon back in hand, ignited it inches from her face, letting the glare wash over it.

Unimpressed, she folded her arms tight. "Skywalker, you might be comfortable with just one, but I used the twin sabers Ky Narec gave me since I was a little hatchling. The ones Master Dooku gave me were the same."

"Which is why you must begin training with one immediately", Vader's mechanical tone corrected her harshly. "You have asmuch to unlearn as learn. Look closer."

Obeying, she looked closer into the blood red of the blade, her tension serving to illustrate the fact that she still didn't trust him entirely- she'd be a fool to. "So what? Yours is better cared-for by your Imperial lackeys."

He radiated a weariness that surprised him in its similarity to his old masters. "You have not seen the crystal within the handle- a Corusca gem, if I'm not mistaken."

She didn't move her impatient gaze an inch, and so didn't have to say _so what?_ To get the point across.

"The point is that you know nothing of it", Vader said, a bit snidely. "The facets of Corusca gems are interlinked in thousands of incredibly complex ways, every molecule tethered to others at the far side. The Lightsaber is no different- it is an art that can never be truly mastered. Not if I were to forego my duties to my master and spend the rest of my days alone, training in the use of the Lightsaber could I truly master it. Using two well requires twice the dedication and concentration."

Asaajj studied the weapon further, still finding nothing, and gave up, exasperated. "In other words, learn to crawl before you walk. Fine then, _one _lightsaber for as long as I'm your apprentice, or until I beat you in a duel."

"If that ever happens, Ventress, I want you to kill me."

She didn't laugh at the attempted jest, looking back at the grassland world they'd left behind. "That's still a tall order with Palpatine around. Where would I-"

She paused, dumbstruck. The handle of the saber was still right up in her face, and she got the message right away. The surface was still unblemished, perfectly reflective and balanced after so much use.

Tentatively, she placed it into her empty belt holster, feeling as though she's just donned black armor of her very own. "Thank you… Master."

No sarcasm. This time she actually meant it, even more than the nervous-looking lieutenant that came running at that same moment, looking as through he hadn't a clue what had just transpired between them, and didn't want to ask. "Lord Vader, the final checkout is complete. Will you be returning to your ship, or coming with us?"

In a departure from the ghoulish silence the young lieutenant had almost come to except from the Sith Lord, Asajj whipped her flexible head around at gave him a thin-lipped smile that chilled him far worse. "I will be returning by Shuttle to the _Shadow Hunter_", Vader said, stepping forward. "That is the ship assigned to me for my trial. However, I want you to give four orders to Captain Veers, and make certain they are followed, understand?"

The lieutenant gulped, fumbling for his datapad. "Y-yes, Lord Vader. What are your orders?"

"First, give my new apprentice a craft. It need not be anything fancy, just the means to bring her with me."

For some reason, the younger man could no longer bear to even look at Ventress' skin or Sith tattoos. "Of course. We will commission her a fighter from our reserve squadrons."

"You had better. Secondly, make certain that the crime boss named Lars is dead before you leave this planet. Thirdly, locate the Uso family's residence, and pay to them the sum of 150,000 Imperial Credits from my personal fortune."

The young man's fingers flew, trying to enter the commands as fast as Vader gave them. Once he finished and caught his breath, Vader looked at Asajj instead of the addressee.

"Lastly, I want this ship to deliver a turbolaser bombardment to Warehouse 7F in Comati's commercial district, where Reyne A'kla had her base of operations. Reduce it to ashes- we will be doing it's denizens a favor in bringing them death."

-

_Lon the Wise_, the Schintian thought with disdain for his title. _A truly wise being would not find themselves in this situation, would have found a way out that does not involve violating nature in every way._

For that had been the naming tradition of his people since before memory- the first name chosen by the family, and the adjective determined by the Schintian's acts or special traits once he or she grew up. His younger brother was Karj the Crimson, named so for his prowess in battle as well as the oddly bright hue of his wings. Inwardly, he wondered what his people would do once they ran out of qualifiers. _They may use Wise again- I certainly do not deserve mine. Perhaps Coward is already taken._

The object of his effort was still struggling in his mental grip- a compassionate spirit, nonetheless stirred up at the prospect of being cruelly severed from the Unliving Force.

The woman was certainly putting up an amazing amount of resistance for one who had died so recently. Already, Lon felt the small bursts near his blood vessels that signified the start of the awful headaches he always got when looking through the Unliving Force with his mind. He could not stay here much longer.

Redoubling his efforts at that thought, locking away his shame, he fastened an iron cage of Force energy around the consciousness he wanted to resurrect, a prison to contain her spirit. Once that was finished, he began to draw the cage, and the consciousness it contained, out of the glorious light and back into the world of the living.

None of his records had indicated any notion of his target having been a Force-user, which was why he forgot to hide his shock when the cage slowed, stopped between life and death by a will as strong as his own.

_This is impossible. How could she…? Wait._

The cage dropped back as he looked closer. Yes, there were indeed two consciousnesses imprisoned inside his trap. Somehow, this one had not only attached itself to the one he had wanted, but lacked the typical energy signature of a completely dead person. This one was more of an echo, a fragment of someone with a strong connection to the Force, who had attached to his intended target and protected her.

Fatigue ate at his heart, and for a moment Lon considered stopping. Raising dead wills from the Force would be useless if he exhausted himself beyond measure in doing so, and this other… presence was very strong indeed. But then there were the consequences of failure. Death, and banishment to the very same featureless sphere of light he now drew upon.

_Apologies, friend_, he thought viciously at the woman's guardian, _it's either you or me._

With that, he plunged back into his task, ignoring the killer headache. Mustering all his strength, Lon pushed his cage further outward, against the strength of this other consciousness… but even this strength might not be enough.

Desperation fueled inspiration. Spending so much time meditating in the decaying throne room of Jomark's High Castle, he'd nearly forgotten about the allies he'd brought with him. _My servants_, he sent to the six Schintians stationed throughout the castle, _I require your aid, please lend me your strength._

One by one, they obliged. Each of the six was Force-sensitive to a degree Lon the Wise had tried to expand upon, but their primary strength still lay in the realm of crude matter- unlike the one they were employed by the homeworld to guard, these six Schintian warriors were both young and athletic- two of them would equal the muscle of the late Trasshk, although he would never be so callous with their lives to test that theory. Deep inside, he was as ashamed of having such loyal bodyguards as he was of his title now.

But their strength served his purposes. Lon the Wise felt life coursing through his bones again, more energy pouring into him from all sides. He felt twenty years younger, and more than a match for whoever had taken it upon themselves to prevent his crime against nature and the Force. With just a bit more effort, he slid the other will's focus aside, moving the cage and it's occupants further away from the light. _Thank you, my friends._

_Just a bit further now_, he contented himself, signaling his guards. _Just a bit farther, and…!_

He nearly lost all grip on the cage in surprise, understanding at last, just who it was he had contained in there. _Small wonder **he** gave me so much trouble. But the reward is worth the risk in this case- two for the price of one. Now I won't even need to extract Ky Narec._

Finally, he ignored the wailing cries and pushed both essences out beyond the border, back into the physical world, albeit as mere phantoms. With just a bit of effort, he could see them now standing before him, neither sure what to do or how to move, or if they could do anything but silently despair over being pulled out of paradise.

Now here, here was the aspect of his talent that Lon knew others would take a very great pleasure in. Palpatine would kill for this- he likely already had.

The cold truth was, that slain consciousnesses still retained some semblance of individual will before merging with the Force. When they were extracted in such a fashion as he had just done, that will just went out the window.

The two essences before him, one male and one female, would not be giving him any more trouble. They were his to command. Staring into four eyes without pupils was unnerving as it had always been… but knowing this fact made it seem all worthwhile. _Control_, he decided bitterly, _is as addictive a substance as Spice_. _I cannot deny the shameful, perverted satisfaction I felt just now, and the Emperor is the greatest addict of all to Control- so much that he will kill me and everyone else for more of it._

Only now, sitting at his left and right claws, did he possess the means to fight back.

-

The _Shadow Hunter_ traveled among the stars once again, a slender silver dagger against the night. Once again, the familiar sight of an endless display of stars greeted Vader's eyes behind his lenses. It was good to be back.

Behind him trailed a smaller craft that made his single-seater look like the height of luxury. As ordered, Asajj Ventess flew the experimental Imperial machine in the _Shadow Hunter_'s wake, careful not to lose its trail.

Vader could not see his new apprentices' face across the left viewport, but he didn't have to in order to guess at her frustration- their path was unclear.

Just as he expected, her voice crackled over his channel, every bit angry as she had always been. "Pardon me, Vader, but I do believe we've been going around in sublight circles for the past ten minutes. What does Palpatine's information say about the last Forgotten?"

The last thing he left like admitting to her is that he had merely been putting his personal craft back into shape for _fun._ No matter how much of weak little Anakin Skywalker he tried to banish, flying any craft would always be fun- a concept someone of his apprentices' upbringing would never comprehend. "I was merely readjusting, Ventress. This ship's computer is sluggish after spending so many days untouched."

That seemed to satisfy her. Vader took the hint and loaded the last file on the Forgotten, placed at the very bottom of the list. He skipped through Zurxix Azur and Trasshk's files, knowing full well that those were no longer needed.

_Forgotten Jedi- Lon the Wise, Schintian Male from Korriban:_

'_There is a reason why I arranged to last this file displayed last. When I met Lon the Wise for the first time on Korriban, he impressed me then with his abilities. Now, ten years after, I have no doubt that he has increased his powers to compensate for his age. His people say that he can speak to and raise the departed, a 'miracle' that has drawn other fools to him in search of reunion with their loved ones. Though I expected far better from the 2nd child of Korriban, do not underestimate him Lord Vader. Lon the Wise will certainly be your most difficult test- treat him as you would me, were I an enemy._

Vader digests the information slowly, still having to wait a pause for the memory to click. _Korriban. The Dark-Side planet, where Obi-Wan and I…_

The Emperor had called Lon the second child of Korriban. That was not suprising- the sinister aura that permeated that planet made it the last place anyone would wish to birth a child. He imagined a Force-sensitive child, exposed to so much negative energy, would be scarred for life by Dark Side power. _The second child of Korriban_, he mused unhappily_, who, then, is the first?_

He shook his helmet to clear it. That didn't matter now, and the spies had indicated that Lon hadn't returned to his place of birth or to his species' homeland. Instead, he had settled on a primitive world called Jomark, where his supposed ability to raise the dead would easily portray him as a living God to its backwater denizens.

Laying in a course for Jomark and feeding the coordinates to Asajj's slower computer, Vader continued to reminiscence, despite how much he'd vowed not to, on his and Obi-Wan's earlier journey to Korriban, just before the outbreak of the Clone Wars. He remembered the feeling of Korriban's shrouding aura of darkness well- it had served their target, Granta Omega, extremely well in his final moments.

This time, mere darkness would not hold him or his new apprentice back. They were one with the night, and would bring the same to Jomark's yokels along with their leader.

He spoke again to Asajj before beginning the jump. "You have been going over the mental exercises I showed you?"

"Yes", her answer came back immediately, stopping herself from saying _Skywalker_ as well as something more…

He leaned closer to the pickup. "And?"

He heard a scowl. "They aren't helping. My powers are best when I am free to let my anger flow, not control it!"

"True, but unrestrained anger makes one a juggernaut without skill. You must learn to control your strongest emotions, Asajj, and use them when appropriate. They may well be the key to true power, but you cannot let your anger run away with you."

He gave her a few seconds to mull over that, then started the ignition sequence. "A great battle lies ahead of us. Recite with me now, the code we follow on that battlefield, the code of the Sith."

Finally relaxing as she had been ordered to, Asajj sounded as though she was truly concentrating on the matter at hand now. Vader would not be surprised to see her eyes closed for her favorite part of the code, as they should be. "Yes, master… Peace is a lie. There is only passion."

Duplicating perfectly the controlled tone she had worked on, he recited the next verse. "Through passion, we gain strength."

"Through strength, we gain victory."

As the stars elongated, Vader let a small measure of his aggression creep back into his voice, as a way of empathizing with his disciple. _After all, we are not like the Jedi, who suppress their emotions so much they may as well be droids. _"Through victory, our chains are broken."

"The Force shall set us free!"

Then they were gone.

-

For the first time he could recall, Lon the Wise sat on his throne in order to speak down to Gran Lassau and the six athletic Schintians. "You have what I seek?"

Still covered by his hood, the alien nodded. "Yes, it was simple enough to procure. Many systems still have them in production for defense against the Separatist Droid armies."

Obligingly, Lon took the silvery object Gran held into his claws, unconsciously balancing it with the far window ledge. Beneath the silver casing lay the clearest indicator that this was a device to be handled carefully- two heavy piston levers, both of which had to be twisted and pulled simultaneously, safety off, to activate it. While a few of his elite guards had seen the weapon before, the technologically-backward folk of Jomark only saw it as another special relic belonging to their master, nothing more.

Lon clasped it tightly, now finally feeling as though he was ready for the ordeal to come. "You will be staying to help us, then? Claws and muscle are the universal weapon, but I doubt either of Palpatine's minions will be ready for the weapons that _you_ bring to battle."

Lassau gently brushed the Paleryin Bol implanted in his right eye is if seeing it for the first time. "I suppose I could be persuaded. It's in my people's best interests to see Vader and Palpatine fall- of that I have no doubt."

Beside him, one of Lon's elite guards stirred, and for a moment, Lassau wondered if he had offended the so-called Wiseman in some way. Instead, the guard was looking out the castle window with a feral intensity usually seen in predator animals.

It took Lasaau just a moment to hear it too- a clamorous peal that could only be artificial in nature, seconded by more subdued thruster noise echoing off the brown stonework of the high castle. _Infidel craft_, Lasaau though to himself. "It seems our guests have already arrived."

For once, Lon actually smiled, showing his aging fangs as if sharpening them for the coming battle. "Then, by all means, let us give them a proper greeting."

-

M: Not much to say here. The final number of chapters is confirmed at an even 10, and my school is having a strike backed by union thugs, so I should get some work done on Chapter 9 relatively soon.


	10. Revelation

Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. Only the five Forgotten characters were created by me, along with the planets Ichosar, T'Gottok, and Whrede.

-

_Nine: Revelation_

**-**

The taste of the world of Jomark filled Vader up the moment he set boot upon it, from the acid red glare of the sky to the rugged dirt and crags underneath him. It almost felt like Mustafar all over again.

He'd been to primitive worlds before, many times trying to _save _the denizens of said worlds from some cosmic disaster or murderous party of individuals. The Republic explorers, while diligent, had always been outnumbered by the worlds that lay outwards from the core, still undiscovered. Last he'd heard, a full half of the galaxy remained uncharted, composing a 'sector' collectively referred to as the Unknown Regions.

This planet, for example, had built itself up from the primordial soup into a monarchist community while the Republic had slumbered not more than three Hyperspace jumps away. But life on such a world would undoubtedly be hard, as evidenced by the prior execution of Jomark's sole king.

_And now_, he mused, _kingship comes to whomever can help these people survive a little easier. The fact that Lon the Wise can perform what they see as miracles would help him on the way._

The High Castle was impossible to miss- it towered over the flat settlements scattered on the wastelands, architecturally impressive despite its extreme state of decay. They had landed some distance from it, knowing that Jomark's new God-king was not technologically hampered the way his servants were- he could have installed Turbolaser turrets in the ancient castle's parapets for all they knew of the place.

Out of the corner of his vision, Vader saw his new apprentice flip out of her own ship, ascending nearly ten feet straight up before landing on her feet, poised to strike.

He swiveled to face Asajj, once again fighting the sense of weariness he'd hated so much from Obi Wan when he had been training a young, brash student. "Save your energy, Ventress. Our enemies wait in the castle, not here."

She knew better now than to bark a harsh retort, and momentarily switched her saber off. "Can't be too careful, Skywa-"

Her voice cut off, interrupted both by Vader's seething tones and the sudden need for air. "I have told you again and again not to refer to me by that name. Did I not win our bet? Am I not your master because the difference between our power?"

She glared back, still filled with the insolence that Vader- to his horror- had known all too well from his days as a Padawan. _I, however, can back up my reprimands with strength instead of empty words. _"I was under the impression that a kill that _avoids_ getting half your memory zapped away was better than yours."

Her biting words called attention to the gaps still remaining in his mind. Small, undetailed ones, but gaps all the same. "Enough of your mouth. We have one final Jedi to kill."

She seemed spurred on by that, and set off at a pace down through the village towards the castle. Even here, he noticed, the young female was trying to outstrip his walking speed to show that she had more energy than he did. Any order to slow down and conserve her rage would only bring her contempt back to the surface.

_Stubborn_, he thought, stalking down the dusty streets at a lesser speed. _But then, she would be. The difference between our powers and ages are not as great as, say, Count Dooku. Her strength has increased since then, and I don't doubt she watches me daily for any sign of weakness, like a vicious predator turned into a pet._

While part of him- most likely the older part- was a bit intimidated by the idea of having an apprentice that would only obey him until his back was turned, another part accepted the challenge with a kind of satisfaction- this was, after all, meant to be a test. The Emperor had long since described the cuthroat cycle of the Sith that had allowed them to survive the purge from 3,000 years ago to him.

There would always be a minimum of two- a Master, and an apprentice. The Master's job was to locate a candidate with passable potential, and pass down to them the most important teachings of the Sith. The apprentice only had to listen and train, and they would eventually surpass- and most likely kill- the master and take their position, passing on what they had learned.

Gradually, as the cycle progressed, he felt certain that the prior Sith Masters would have edited out parts of the code they saw to be weak and unnecessary fluff. It could have continued that way, on down to Darth Plagueis, gradually becoming a more efficient code, like a weapon sharpened and improved by each new generation.

He looked at Asajj's slender form again, understanding her role better. _She cannot be faulted- she understands the code and it's tenets. Like her, I wait for the day when my powers surpass the Emperor, only to take his place… _**_and _**_to have my apprentice take the position I currently hold- right hand to the ruler of the galaxy._

Of course, he was getting ahead of himself. Like it or not, he owed Palpatine more than what any Sith code decreed, owed him enough not to rush his training in the Dark Arts just to catch up, but at the same time he needed to stay strong in front of his own apprentice. A critical balance of power, it was.

To his surprise, the gate of the High Castle was wide open for them when they arrived. Both Asajj and Vader stared up at the high parapets for just a moment, then Vader nodded. "Let us go. As you said, one Jedi left. It could be he was not expecting us."

Alert for any signs of a trap, he ignited his own personal saber- the one he'd created in Sedriq Uso's shop way back when. Fuelled by a crystal of sea coral from Chandrila's oceans, the new weapon burned forth in a geyser of deadly red light alongside the old saber that he'd given to Asajj. Nearly back-to-back, they sidled into the keep.

Inside, they had an up close view of a black hooded figure, flanked by four tall, muscular Schintians sitting so still they could have been gargoyle statues. The slightest probing of this crowd confirmed his suspicion. _It's not Lon_, he sent to Asajj.

But he sensed she had already perceived that. What was even more shocking to her was that neither of them could feel anything in the Force of the black-hooded figure in the center. He wasn't a Sith Master- not even the Emperor could block both of their Force senses at once. He was merely a void, a creature somehow empty of the Force altogether.

From Asajj, Vader sensed something more than the surprise he felt- it was almost as if she had expected to see such an abnormality here. Whatever the case, the leader didn't waste any time in taking off for a large spiral staircase in the center of the large castle foyer, leaving Vader and Ventress alone to face four guards, who had subtly encircled them at the four corners of the chamber while they had been probing their leader.

He wasn't worried yet. The four Schintians might have been capable of flight and physically strong, but lightsabers would shred their weaponless arms like paper. He couldn't understand why it was the four looked so confident, fangs jutting from their reptilian faces…

Then, as one, both of the red beams projected by the pair's weapons faded, flashing on and off with greater and greater frequency, then fizzled altogether. Vader was the first to hit the button again, and to discover that both of their weapons had been disabled.

He found out something else, as well- he could not longer hear the steady beat of his respiration unit, nor feel the cool air it had always pumped into his ruined lungs. All at once, his mechanical suit had been disabled, making him collapse to the floor like a cripple.

"Then again", he managed to pant weakly, kneeled beside a bewildered Asajj, "underestimating one's enemy is a fatal flaw."

The guards moved in, ready to kill.

-

Asajj Ventress saw Vader collapse to his knees, nearly completely bent over with pain. She didn't even have to try her indimitation factor- an animal snarl that would have done Trasshk proud- to know that it wouldn't work against these gargoyle-like opponents.

_Improvise_, she decided, spinning around to catch sight of all four corners while summoning more of the Dark Side to her. _Remember our training_.

Her heart so filled with focused rage that she thought her heart would burst, Asajj moved her left arm- the mechanical one- around in a circle to clear some space for the both of them. The first three backed off, while the fourth, a grim-jawed adversary that looked to be the leader, caught the swipe without blinking.

She had had quite enough of sharp animal talons piercing her skin for one lifetime. Using the momentum of the swipe, she leaped up and kicked the titanic Schintian in the head, hard enough to stagger him for a moment, then spun all the way around to leap for the next guard over.

She wasn't surprised to see him block as well, but was very surprised when he snapped his left wing out at her, slashing a furrow along her cheek. She rolled with the blow and, using both legs, twisted the guard into a spiral that made his wings so much ballast. Midway through that maneuver, the two closest statues in the foyer, both of them artistic renditions of armored gladiators, pounced upon the two guards advancing on her crippled master.

It wouldn't hold them long- it was clear to her now that these four creatures could touch the Force to a limited extent, but it didn't have to. Before she could think of anything else, the leader angled in with a midair jab, using his wings to adjust his flight.

Flipping back to her feet in an instant, she faced the four guards anew. _So they really can fly. This makes things difficult. Skywalker had better get up soon, or we won't even live to see the last Jedi die._

-

Lon the Wise could not sense the fight, not in the sense that would have been possible for others of his talent. The mere act of looking at the assassins through the eyes of his Schintian guards would be to invite physical and mental exhaustion. Clearly, his venture into the Unliving Force had been more taxing than he'd given it credit for.

Gran Lassau watched intently by his side now, along with the two remaining guards flanking the throne, one of them holding the device he had used at Lon's command to short out all electronics in the vicintity… including itself.

Instead of depending upon sight for a gage of the senseless violence he knew was occurring two floors down, he focused concentration on the mind and body of the Sith Lord, Darth Vader. As he had expected, the Electronic Scramble-Wave emitter had deprived him of the artificial support he had needed to breathe- only the oxygen being force-fed telekinetically into his lungs was keeping him alive, even as it prevented Vader from taking any other action.

Gran Lassau, of course, was blind to all of this, had no idea what was going on after he had run from the central foyer in an attempt to lure Vader and his disciple to the throne room. He did, however, look strangely eager for an agent who had claimed on more than one occasion that he owed allegiance to no one.

"Tell me", Lon said, his eyes closed so as to focus his concentration, "what is your conflict with our guest?"

He could not read the emotions or actions of the agent without surrendering the focus he had on Vader, so his ears were the only avenue for Lassau's reluctant reply. "I merely intended to finish the job I had begun on Chandrila. As I have said, I don't claim to understand why it is you are trying to lure him to your chamber. Won't he simply kill you when he arrives?"

Lon fought back a chuckle. "That assumes he survives the fight before him. But yes, you are right to assume that that was a diversion. I _want_ him to come here, but weakened enough so that I'll have time to talk to him."

Lassau's voice grew even more surprised. "You think that your words can make him veer from his task after all this?"

As if stirred from afar by his words, Vader's consciousness took a sudden pulse, just enough to block the claws of one guard that Asajj hadn't been able to stop. Invigorated, Lon reclined, trying to relax his mind. "Oh, it's far better than that. Once I have said my bit- once I have cut through the Emperor's lies- he will have a far bigger target to destroy. In this, I shall make him my instrument."

Lassau still wasn't convinced. Lon imagined he could feel his raspy breath on his skin. "And what about the girl? Chaos incarnate, she is. You can't expect to tame her easily."

Cutting away from the vision of Asajj Ventress making one of his guards cry out in pain, he agreed. "You are right on that account. Once I am done speaking with Vader, you may kill her. My gift to you."

-

_GET UP. I must get up…_

Vader's vision was hazy, but he had far better senses to serve in that regard. Even so, the picture that those senses offered was as confusing as it was haphazard.

What he got from it was a scene of devastation in the hallway. Every one of the statues had been pulled down from their perches, as a means to either crush their attackers or distract them. Several of the walls were sporting new gouges. The floor looked black with blood. _Whose_ blood?

_GET UP. You must help Ventress._

Why, though?

More than the terrible lack of oxygen stunning him into submission, it was the despair that had now come flooding back. His memories were regained, pieced back together, and most of them were unhappy ones. Once again, the mechanical suit he wore felt more like a filthy trap from which he could never escape. Reyne A'kla's final blast had almost done him a favor- it had removed the hole in what was left of his heart that was Padme's demise.

Pain ate into this thoughts, twisting them. Was it really worth going on like this? No matter how powerful he became, the hole would never heal. _And it was my fault. If only I hadn't…_

_Time cannot be reversed_. Now that was a Force power worth pursuing. If only he could relive the past few months, things would be different. _Isn't that what everyone desires- the chance to relive their lives, avoiding mistakes?_

Jedi training had once convinced him that the power of the Force had no limits if one could open themselves to it completely. Just another lie- not even Reyne A'kla could make him unsee what he seen, reverse the events that had brought him to this.

_Enough self-pity_, came the rebuke, almost as though from outside his mind. _You still have enemies to destroy. You still have a great debt to repay to the Emperor. You did not survive Mustafar simply to wallow in pity, as Anakin did._

Another guard had fought his way through the debris, aiming for Vader's neck. He caught the claw, twisted it until he heard a soft _crack_, and tossed the creature into a wall.

He could not undo what had transpired, or fight the pain of memories. What he could do was pretend, was see the reflections of the past in the present and future. On some level or another, he could still believe everything would be all right.

For one, he could pretend Asajj was Padme. Padme, as she might look without hair or garment, with pasty white skin, and every bit as warped by the Dark Side as he had been. He had never realized up until now what an easy leap of imagination that was to make- Padme was not a Force-user, but if she had been a Sith, this was what she would be like. The illusion gathered unrestrained passion in his soul, something he hadn't felt for months now. It was every bit as powerful as he had said.

_Hold on then, Padme, or Asajj, or whoever you are. You won't die today, if I can help it._

-

His distance from the fight lessened the pain, but Lon still snapped his head away and winced when he saw Asajj Ventress push one of his guards- his wings already lacerated by sharp rocks she had levitated earlier- out the window of the second floor. The fall would not be fatal, but that guard was out of the fight and out of consideration.

Just like the leader, who was now dead, impaled through the chest by a spear the young Force-wielder had pilfered from one of the stone warrior statues in an area of the castle best referred to as a cathedral.

What surprised him the most was the way Vader came stomping into the fight, suddenly choking the life out of a guard who had been moments away from decapitating young Ventress at the time. Just as his connection allowed Lon to share strength among his guards and himself, so was their pain shared.

He, however, had recovered enough so that he could see Gran Lassau's expectant gaze. He was doubtlessly eager to learn how the battle was going.

"Two guards are down", he told Lassau emotionlessly. "Vader and Ventress have improvised weapons from their surroundings."

Lassau seemed awestruck, even behind his cloak, causing Lon to wonder just how experienced an agent he was, having accidentally let slip a few things to him already. "Vader? But I thought you disabled his abomin- mechanical devices. How does he still live?"

Lon curled his lip, thinking that the answer should be obvious. "The Force. The Dark Side, to be precise. Vader has a newfound source of passion- an obsession that has allowed him to fight on even with limited oxygen supplies. It's really quite clever- he's turning Force energy into electrical energy for brief periods, allowing him to fight at a reduced pace. Now they are both approaching the second floor of this castle."

He turned to the two guards near him and barked curtly in his native tongue. "Go now. Stop them."

Two minutes after that, he sighed loudly. "They are now battling their way up the stairway you used to get here. Three of my guards remain. I suggest you retreat to the shadows."

Lassau's eyes bulged a bit, unable to conceal his surprise now that he was so close up. With luck, neither of the assassins would even detect his presence. They certainly would be unable to using the Force.

Two guards left- the two he had just sent away to their deaths. Silly of him to try and procrastinate the fateful confrontation by throwing them away- the team of Vader and Ventress was obviously more than a match for anything he threw at them, even with their lightsabers disabled.

He felt another guard go out, this one with his throat cut by a makeshift dagger wielded by Vader telekinetically. He caught one last, fleeting vision of red light springing forth from a metal cylinder, and knew that the scrambler wave had worn off.

The next few moments would depend largely on his own eloquence, acting ability,and luck to determine whether or not he would live to sit upon the Empire's throne himself… or be destroyed by Palpatine's lackeys. Lon cleared his throat. _This is it. No going back._

The doors burst open.

-

The two advanced, sabers lit, once again covering each other's backs perfectly. What they saw, alone on the castle throne and bereft of protectors, was another creature that mirrored a figure of Vader's forsaken past closely enough to make him hesitate.

He was inwardly amazed. If the brutal Asajj Ventress was a dark-side reflection of his beloved Padme, then Lon the Wise was undoubtedly the Yoda of the Dark Side. Besides the wings, which he had learned were often an unconscious indicator of a Schintian's emotions, Lon was every bit as small and rumpled in appearance as thehead of the old Jedi order, small enough to have plenty of spare room on the throne on which he sat, claws grasping the armrests tightly.

The main difference besides that, of course, was his eyes. Whereas Yoda's eyes had oft-seemed perky and almost carefree before the dark days of the Clone Wars, Lon's slitted irises scarcely halted, so swiftly were they darting between targets. He seemed very relaxed and intelligent in his manner, but beneath that façade Vader sensed an unmistakable core of darkness and mistrust that Lon's light-side equivalent would neither carry nor abide.

Lon also did not speak like his wingless counterpart, but rather in an emotionless inflection from the best-educated officers from Coruscant. "Lord Vader and his new apprentice", he acknowledged politely as they stepped forward. "As you may have guessed by now, we have prepared for your arrival."

Taking a moment to remember that her saber was working again, Ventress angrily thrust her weapon forth. "Then you should have prepared for your death as well, lizard. From Lord Palpatine, to us, to you!"

Melodramatically, the old Schintian spread his claws. "I know much of your so-called Emperor and his plans. In fact, I am one of the few beings alive today that have met him in his early youth. Perhaps it is because of this that his threats do not frighten me."

Smelling a lie, Vader extended his own saber towards his target. "The Emperor's power is far greater than yours, son of Korriban."

Whatever happiness lay in Lon's face and voice vanished in an instant. "Only because he was the one that was _chosen_ and not me." Following this, a more shifty expression came over him. "I see I have your attention, Vader. Tell your pet to stand down, and I promise I won't disappoint you."

He waited only a moment before signal to Asajj, who was profoundly grumpy at not being able to make her kill right away. Nonetheless, she slid back, saber ready only to prevent any attempt at escape. "If you ask me, he's dead already", she sulked.

"I regret the necessity of teasing you with information", Lon spoke up emotionlessly. "But I also believe you should hear this information, Vader. You've been a large part of the Emperor's schemes… and _mine_… for a very long time now."

Despite himself, his curiosity was peaked. "What do you mean, schemes? It was unfortunate fate that crippled me in the way you just took advantage of. The Emperor saved me, helped me survive the fires of the abyss. I owe him _everything_."

"Really", Lon replied dryly. "Then a trustworthy servant such as yourself would know the name by which he has gone for the past twenty years- _Darth Sidious_. Does _that_ ring a bell?"

Nothing could stop his black frame from visibly stiffening at the mention of that name. Beside him, Asajj fought to conceal her own reaction. _Darth Sidious. The Confederacy's secret bankroller. Master Dooku's Master… Palpatine? Impossible!_

"I seem to have hit a nerve", Lon chuckled to their shocked silence. "Yes, that was a rather suitable title Darth Plageius awarded to him… when he made _him _his apprentice instead of _me_."

He made the last words a bitter scowl. "Yes, as you said, Vader, the Emperor, or I should say Darth Sidious, is more powerful than any of us because DarthPlagueis chose the first son of Korriban, instead of the second, to be his apprentice, to pass on the power and tradition of the Sith!"

"Impossible", Vader choked out, reeling. "Senator Palpatine is a child of Naboo, not of Korriban!"

While they had been stiff as bone when he had been scowling, Lon's wings now stretched to their total length, casting shadows over both of them. "Just another lie propagated by Sidious", he said with a mix of savage glee and jealousy.

"He might have been _raised_ on Naboo, and then, on Coruscant… but anyone who has seen Reyne A'kla's handiwork with 'children' knows just how crucial the first few days of an infant's life are. Sidious and I, we are the only two ever born there, among the tombs of the ancient Sith legends. That darknessnever leaves you. From birth, it has imprinted us both with a darkness in our souls we can _never_ escape! From a certain point of view, _Korriban_ was a greater father to us than any flesh-and-blood being could ever hope to be!"

Regaining control, he stopped shouting, knowing that his revelations had shaken Vader to his very core. However, Asajj was not nearly as easily stunned by the implications. "So you think that makes you two brothers in a sick kind of way, huh. Hah… we'll give him your best regards from beyond the grave."

His wings now relaxed in a folded position over his frail frame, Lon gave a semi sane laugh. "I know this, because we were both compelled to eventually return to Korriban. I met him for the first time when he was a mere twelve years, myself ten And that is when DarthPlagueis came into the picture."

The current Sith Lord gave no further reaction to the mention of the former. He was still caught up in the shock, finding it impossible to picture a young teenager Palpatine, one shorter and devoid of the old age and deformities that now wracked his Emperor.

His Emperor, who was actually Darth Sidious, who had been well-known as the apex of the triad of entities behind the Clone Wars, who had barely escaped capture at his birthplace on Korriban!

"I can see the pieces coming together beneath that helmet of yours, Vader", Lon sneered. "Doubtless you've deduced that your precious Emperor ignited the Clone Wars in order to justify taking more power for himself, and creating the Clone Army that would answer to him and only him. Every atrocity and death caused in that war lies on his head!"

"Impossible! That would mean…!"

Finished with the last crushing blow, Lon smiled, showing his dull fangs. "Yes. No Clone Wars means no attempted 'Jedi Coup'. It means no dangerous mission to Mustafar. It means that your Padme might have lived."

No longer content to sit and listen, Ventress raised the weapon that had initially been Vader's. "That's enough of your lies. Time to die."

The saber was at Lon's throat when Vader shouted: "_NO_!", so loudly that even Asajj halted and looked at him, stunned.

He had no want for the power of anger now- a tide of hateful rage had filled him up once again, with a very different target from the one he had had in mind. "Let him speak. You mean to say that he orchestrated all of this, merely to gain my services?"

Trying to ignore the blade at his throat, Lon blinked. "Absolutely. Padme was just the catalyst. Dear 'brother' Sidious saw her as your pressure point- something he knew you would respond to."

Suddenly he was back there again. Not at Mustafar, but in the lab he had been brought to afterwards. Just like then, a shell of flesh and metal could not contain his rage. Just like then, everything that could break or shatter, did. Dust floated into the air over the noise of violently breaking stone.

"Fear not, Lord Vader", Lon said over the noise. "I have told you that you are not the only one to be cheated by Sidious. That worthless human cheated me out of the apprenticeship that should have been mine to begin with. You are not the only one who desires vengeance upon him, and revenge against the Emperor is not something anyone can achieve on their own. Understand me?"

Vader looked straight at Lon for the longest time, his true feelings masked both figuratively and literally. "You play the game well, wiseman. If my Emperor had not earned the title of Darth Sidious from his way with words, I have no doubt that _you _would."

Trying not to let himself be distracted by the hum of the blade or the ghostly beat of Vader's respirator, Lon tightened his gaze. "Is that a _yes_? Will you join me in avenging us upon Sidious?"

"This was your plan all along", Vader grated. "Maneuver me into a righteous fury directed at my Emperor, so that you might take the throne of the Empire for yourself. I have something a bit different in mind… but Sidious will die all the same, you can be certain of that. Ventress? _Kill him_."

The harsh command did more that set Ventress off. Gran Lassau, who had been watching the confrontation unfold from the upper balcony, heard Vader's words, and moved with lightning speed to stop her.

Someone else stopped her first. From the very moment that Vader and his ally had stepped into the proverbial throne room of Lon the Wise, the room had been shrouded in darkness tinged with the red light of the planet's atmosphere. It had not occurred to either of them until now that someone could actually hide amongst the slender shadows created by the throne. Judging by the way Asajj was violently thrown away from Lon's fragile neck, that someone was very strong as well as very stealthy.

Acting as though he had expected his rescuer all along, Lon the Wise stood up with his wings stretched to their full length. He remained a short figure, but still intimidating somehow. "It's no surprise that you feel no small measure of debt to Lord Sidious", he said to Vader formally, ignoring Asajj's groan as she struggled back to her feet. "Just as he orchestrated it- he has you dangling on a narrow thread of hope that the power of DarthPlagueis would save your loved one. I tell you now, he will _never_ be able to make good on that promise!"

Vader's raised his own saber even as Lon's words tore awayat what was left of his heart. "Stop. Stop talking."

The Schintian ignored him as well, gesturing theatrically to his right with one claw. "_I_, however, can. Take a look."

Ahead, shrouded in luminous blue, the face that had dwelled Vader and Anakin Skywalker's dreams since before he could remember appeared. She was dressed in familiar formal robes and her face was not yet discernable, but the structure, the fairness of being he'd fallen in love with, that was unmistakable.

_Padme_. Even Asajj was stunned by her appearance here, of all places, when she should have been buried back on Naboo. Neither could retain full faith in their senses, seeing this.

Once again at a loss for words, he looked closer, cursing the restrictive lenses of his helmet with renewed vigor. "Impossible… Padme? Is that you?"

"This is my most unique talent", Lon told him, once again weaving his verbal spell. "It took a fair bit of effort to extract her essence from the Force, let me tell you that. Right now, she is a mind without a body."

This time, he made the connection instantly. "The facility on Kamino was destroyed, but cloning cylinders still exist. It would be possible to-"

_Possible to return to Naboo, steal a corpse, make a clone from the sample?_

"NO." Asajj's voice cut through the mental fog that had been gathering on him and Padme.

Ignoring the animalistic look Lon gave her, Asajj threw her saber directly through the image of Padme to prove her point. For once, she matched Vader's ragingfury at her with her own. "He's lying, Skywalker! You can't raise a dead consciousness and put it into a clone body! Dooku told me!"

Still not comprehending, Vader stepped between the two Dark Jedi, ready to lacerate either one or the other. "Explain."

She gave Lon the Wise a smug look before speaking, knowing that she was about to seal his doom with her words. "Remember, I fought with the Confederacy in the Clone Wars. The mission to Kamino was originally to _capture_ the facility instead of destroying it, Skywalker. Those Nemoidian cowards were terrified at the idea that they might die in the war- they wanted the opportunity to create backup clones of themselves. But Count Dooku disagreed, saying that only those strong in the Force could transfer their essence to a clone body!"

He looked across from Asajj to Padme to Lon, still not sure of whom to kill. Would Padme _want_ this? Even if Lon found a way, what would her existence be like, an unnatural one limited by the short lifespans of clones?

He looked back at the glowing blue spirit of his former lover, and saw his final answer. Padme's face had been indistinct before, the details difficult to make out in the glow. But the lenses he had cursed moments before could magnify his vision, could see the awful truth of Lon's deception.

Her face was twisted into an expression of the purest agony. Only once had he seen her like this in the flesh- right after _he_ had used the Force to choke her in his anger and hatred. This time, through, her pain was not that of a broken heart, but simply of being torn away from the heavenly paradise she had willingly entered, escaping from the hell of Mustafar's revelations.

He could see everything so clearly now, how Palpatine had played Padme as his weakness, caused by his passion. He would never make such a mistake again.

Vader closed his eyes in the deepest of grief behind the mask, mustering his emotions. _Very well then, Padme, _he thought at the beautiful phantom before him.

_The Force, or God, knows I miss you and the old days so much… but I care for you too much to hurt you further with my own desires. I will see you returned to where you want to go… even if that is far away from me. And I promise you… that I will never care for another as much as I do for you, in hopes that you can forgive me someday._

Straightening, he turned and faced Lon. "No, wiseman. She is clearly suffering in this state. Release her. Return her to the living Force. Now."

The shorter Jedi could not hide his own surprise in both his face and his leathery wings. "But Lord Vader, she is only an unstable essence! If I let her go now, if I let my concentration slip, she can _never_ return from death!"

Amazing that he could feel a kind of macabre amusement at this statement, radiating at across to everyone in the room. "You won't to worry about that now- you'll be joining her."

For the second time that day, a red Sith lightsaber flew for Lon's neck. For the second time, it was deflected by another presence hidden in the room. Vader was reminded of the way his saber had stopped inches from killing Reyne A'kla, halted by a new power intruding upon him. This was not a mental power, however, but a shining blue lightsaber wielded telekinetically by an enemy even stronger than Lon the Wise…

He decided, then, that the two dark sons of Korriban had more in common than either would care to admit. They were both old, powerful Dark Side Force users that were both manipulative and completely two-faced. Lon had lost all control of the situation as well as any chance at stealing the galaxy away from Palpatine, and was now scowling in frustration even as he called his strongest protector to his side.

But just _who_ that final guardian was, he could not yet discern...

---

M: So now all of the mysteries except the last are resolved. I am not violating any continuity this chapter that I am aware of- details of Emperor Palpatine's background are still sketchy, except for the fact that he was certainly Plagueis' apprentice, and the man who killed him. It was also reported in one of the prequel novels that he returned to the planet Korriban several times in the guise of Darth Sidious over the course of his life, for an unknown purpose.

Regarding Padme's brief appearance and Asajj's explanation, it was first implied in the multipart _Dark Empire_ comic series that only Jedi or Sith can directly transfer their memories and personality into a clone body. The Emperor may be the only Force-wielder to ever successfully do so, and even then, his looks and style were changed noticeably from the original.

Last chapter is on the way. I hope to get at least two more reviews over this stack of crazy plot revelationsbefore posting the final conclusion.


	11. Freudian Showdown

Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. Only the five Forgotten characters were created by me, along with the planets Ichosar, T'Gottok, and Whrede. I made up the name Darth Malevolence off the top of my head, and Darth Vulcanus is actuallyfrom Bob and George, the best online comic strip ever.

-

_Ten: Freudian Showdown_

**-**

The eyes of Lon the Wise's last protector seemed to shine as brightly as his blue lightsaber through the mist that was the prelude to the return of another departed consciousness. Seeing young Ventress struggling back to her feet, Darth Vader searched the obscuring cloud with every sense, searching for the mind of his final test.

Now he fully understood the special power of Lon the Wise- he could raise the departed, albeit temporarily and without their bodies. Even amongst Jedi, this was a miracle, but undoubtedly the one that had gotten him expelled from the order forever.

If money was of any real concern to Vader, he would have bet his entire fortune that this final defender was another raised consciousness. What he sensed with the Force was incomplete in many ways, so that he often found his own memories and feelings where he should have found the defender's. Exactly how the resurrected entity was wielding a lightsaber was a question on it's own.

_A figure from the past_, he reminded himself. _And a powerful one, strong enough to surprise my apprentice. But he is outnumbered and outmatched here- Lon is helpless on his own now, drained of all his strength._

Bit by bit, the mist cleared, first revealing Lon's shriveled face, which had since regained its previous confidence. _Wait a little longer, creature, and you will pay for playing with my feelings like this._

**Then** he saw Lon's strongest servant. An old memory awakened. Ages old, crusted over, but still somehow as fresh as the day he'd seen it. The premonition of danger he'd felt even as a boy when the Sith Lord known to the galaxy as Darth Maul had first appeared, and viciously attacked the two men responsible for protecting him.

He'd felt it again, much later, personally this time. One attuned to the Force as he was could not ignore the crackling aura of power surrounding Count Dooku. The man had been obviously very dangerous even to the untrained eye. Since that day, his face would slide into a blank slate whenever danger of this magnitude rose, an emotionless expression that showed no mercy in the battle, but promises aplenty.

Now, he saw that face, mirrored perfectly, on the combat-hardened face of his adversary.

As the mist reached its climax, Lon the Wise couldn't suppress a slight chuckle before backing off to let the fight begin. "You see, Lord Vader? A true master is prepared for all contingencies. I have forseen that Anakin Skywalker will help me to destroy Palpatine and take back what's mine! One Anakin Skywalker… _or another_."

-

Still viewing the growing blue glow from his seat, Gran Lassau followed the two Sith below him in sizing up the new individual whom Lon the Wise had seemingly pulled from nowhere.

_So this is what he was working on_, Lassau secretly marveled. _First Padme Amidala, and now Anakin Skywalker reborn as specters of their old selves. _While he was not the most knowledgeable of beings on the subject, Lassau knew Anakin as one of the heroes of the Clone Wars. He felt no surprise that he was dead after what he had heard of the Jedi purge, but seeing the man in the flesh, so to speak, gave him a very different impression.

Demonstrating that he was not merely there for show, Anakin moved independently of Lon, stretching out one hand in concentration and somehow blasting young Rattatak Gran had come to know as Asajj Ventress out one of the castle's many window frames.

Beneath his disguise, his eyes widened. _I still have a great deal to learn of this power Lon calls the Force. After seeing what it can do, I would be a fool not to. _Asajj's shriek as she fell seemed to have snapped Lord Vader out of his torpor, and back to the business at hand.

For Gran, the miracles just kept getting bigger- now _Anakin_ spoke. His tone was deadly serious, without a hint of the weakness Lassau would expect from someone raised from the dead.

"I've had enough", Anakin said tersely to Vader, pacing him aggressively for an opening stroke. "You're me, and I've seen enough of the darkness- I want my life back."

For some reason, Vader found this slightly amusing. "You jest. I have changed for the better since the days when I answered to your name. You are nothing but a collection of stray memories given life and form!"

"And _you_", Anakin replied, pointing in accusation, "are _me_, except ensnared by dark power, and crippled. I can't guess how that happened, but I know this _isn't_ what I want to become in life! You were a mistake!"

Now completely clear in his new purpose, Vader raised his own saber, a burning red to match Anakin's clear blue. "Fool. You've already become it. We'll just see how 'crippled' I am now."

Finished with all attempts at reason, the two crashed together, saber against saber. In all the time he'd consorted with the Forgotten, Lassau had never seen lightsabers move so quickly, or clash with such strength behind them. Both warriors seemed to be trying to rain down as many consecutive blows on the other as possible, shying away from any long exchanges while trying to find paths around the other's defenses. He'd worked with Trasshk long enough to recognize a sword master when he saw one. And Vader and Anakin, without a doubt, were masters.

They'd circled the throne room during the first salvo, and now Vader had his black cape to the throne Lon had sat upon moments before. Among other things, Lassau was amazed by how similar their techniques were, almost as if…

-

_Once again_, Asajj Ventress couldn't help but think. _Once again, death and oblivion misses me by micrometers._

It was the décor that saved her. For some reason or another, the high castle of Jomark was layered by a row of small statues shaped to resemble the gargoyle-face of a Schintian. Catching one of these, she had hung there on the desolate stone wall, the encroaching pain flowing to her twisted arm the best sign that this was not a hallucination.

Yet, she couldn't deny what she had seen. _Skywalker_, of all people, had appeared up there and blasted her with a telekinetic wave that had overwhelmed all defenses. _Impossible… unless the man I have come to know as Darth Vader is someone else entirely?_

No. That was foolishness- she'd recognized the posture and aura of Skywalker the moment she'd laid eyes on him at Chorax. True, his feel had changed, matured and darkened since Yavin 4, but it remained unmistakable.

The sound of footclaws on broken stone drew her full concentration to the present time. Lon the Wise was running away from the battle upstairs, but it only took one acrobatic swing through a lower window to catch him off guard with a double kick to the chest, knocking the old creature into a dusty stone wall.

Whatever pretense of manner he'd feigned in the throne room was gone- this time, the second son of Korriban was only trying to get out of this alive. This was reflected in the gaze of feral reaction he directed to Asajj, along with several large pieces of debris that lay strewn about the hall.

"Apologies, young one", the elder snarled quickly through the assemblage of statues. "You have to die now."

She could only laugh at the telekinetic threat. "First, Skywalker killed me on Yavin 4. Then General Kenobi, Dooku, and then your buddy Trasshk killed me. Just now, Skywalker killed me _again_. My life is on an expense account that would blow your mind, you festered little _imp_. Take your best shot."

-

Now Darth Vader understood some of what it was that he'd brought to bear on the many rivals that had challenged him in the past few years. The intensity on the other man, or phantom, or whatever's face betrayed few signs of future moves, only a raw sense of focus. Anakin Skywalker looked the same in combat as he would in a complicated game of Dejarik.

He never had been very good at Dejarik. But he was very good at slashing other people to bloody chunks with a lightsaber, no matter the color. The rapid chain of slashes he'd rained down upon his larger opponent had driven him backwards into the throne, nearly bending him over. Summoning the strength and muscle he had accumulated since before the Clone Wars, Vader erupted back into the duel with a steadiness his younger counterpart could not match.

He was settling into a different game now, understand that the one he'd tried to play before- the one where he matched his enemy move for move- was only going to get him killed. Despite the fact that he was for a great many intents purposes dead, Skywalker moved with an endless wellspring of vigor that was the exclusive province of the young and hotheaded. He was faster, lighter, and more nimble than the black-armored cyborg he was intent on killing. As if to demonstrate this fact, he fled one broad swing with a flashy leap that took him over and around to the other side of Vader.

So he played a different game. Conditioned by years of training, Vader slowed his pace down to a static defense, only expending the bare minimum of energy needed to survive Skywalker's rapid-fire attacks. As he soon learned, a simple guard could ward off several of the quick strikes, since they were mostly made without consideration, for the sole purpose of overwhelming the opponent with numbers and blazing speed.

So the defense remained. The frenzied blows made his enemy became analogical to several dozen starfighters deliberately crashing into the azure shields of a heavy cruiser- each hit consumed far more resources and energy than they took away from the behemoth. Vader was not sure if he liked the heavy slashes and guards that Trasshk had inspired him into using, but he could not doubt that they were more effective in the hands of a more intelligent fighter than a Trandoshan giant.

After a storm of these strikes, the Skywalker phantom seemed to get wise. He began working his way around the strong guard without much heed to his own. While Vader initially took the opportunity to slash at Skywalker's unprotected arms and legs with relish, he drew back in a mix of shock and fury when the limbs reformed, as though they had been nothing but a part of the fog cloud that still enveloped the room.

Tightening his focus, Anakin drove him through a different window, this one leading directly out onto a slanted roof that had to be the top of the cathedral. Footing was less than ideal, but both red and blue sabers continued to slam into each other as if nothing had happened. For once, Vader could survey the dark brown leather armor he knew so well, upon the enemy's body. It reflected the austere glow from the blood red sun as well as Vader's black armor, casting multiple shadows across the shingled rooftop.

"Our feelings are mutual", Vader managed to rasp angrily over the fevered clashing of blades. "You represent everything my master has helped to excise. What future lies upon the path of the Jedi we once cherished? Nothing but empty servitude to the masses!"

"Better that", his phantom countered, "than servitude to one man! Face it- Palpatine is every bit as bad as Dooku!" He punctuated these words with actions, spinning his saber as a bright blurry pinwheel, fast enough to catch and dislodge any kind of saber guard no matter how strong.

Recognizing the trick, he leapt back across the roof of the cathedral, the black cape flapping behind him and adding distance. Only from that range did he feel it safe to drop his weapon for even a millisecond. "This is not servitude, Anakin Skywalker, weak, despised puppet of the Jedi… _it is ascension_!"

Truth be told, he was as surprised as Anakin at what happened next. The door his rage had thrust open was pure power. He could feel it reemerging, condensing… and appearing, as another phantom image of it's former self.

Anakin's eyes widened as he beheld the specter of a man, bald, with gray skin and what looked like red battle armor covering him all the way up to where his mouth would be. Though he held no weapon, the phantom still radiated both dark menace and power.

More came on, a flood unlocked by Vader's opening himself to pure rage, arranged in a circle of both men _and_ women from the past.

"Malak." Vader said, pointing out and identifying the first specter his rage had summoned. "Traya. Ruin. Vulcanus. Bane, Nihilus, and Malevolence! Many more besides. I honor a dynasty every bit as old and powerful as that of the Jedi!"

Anakin could say nothing, still surrounded as he cast his gaze to each of the imposing creatures, each radiating their own unmistakable aura hatred and greed. From the sneer on Darth Kreia's red lips, to Darth Ruin's sagging form of cracked stone, to the freakish network of trauma scars tracing across Darth Malevolence's entire body. The circle of thirteen Sith Lords ended back at Vader with Anakin at its center, and not even the glow of his saber could escape it.

No way to escape… except for downwards. Acting quickly, before any of the Sith could react, he slashed at the floor beneath his feet, causing the entire structure to collapse on itself.

Vader took the plunge without regret, without fear of losing the silent support of the legacy of Sith standing behind him upon the timeline of the Universe. He knew what had to be done.

-

Asajj Ventress tried to ignore the heavy heart sounding in her ears as she sprinted down a spiral staircase after Lon. After coming this far, there was no way she was going to lose him now, even if she had to chase him out of his own castle.

She should have known better. Every attack Lon had launched, bereft of his own lightsaber, had been to buy himself time to escape. She'd avoided two near-fatal obstacles thus far into the chase, the first being a weak section of stairs that had buckled up to crush her, the second being a collection of rubble arranged to look like a wall covering a passage to the third floor.

_Don't stop_, she commanded her legs. _He's an old man, there's no way he can outrun me._

The moment that thought crossed her mind, it was rewarded- she had just entered a ramshackle atrium at the top of the castle, shaken further by a sudden tremor nearby. Lon the Wise was standing near one of the largest windows, preparing to take flight and leave both her and Vader behind.

"No!" she cried, flinging her saber by instinct and desperation to stop him. She saw the weapon flashing end over end, closing on the middle of his back just his wings stretched outward…

Her aim was true, and Asajj was rewarded with seeing the Schintian cough up blood, falling backwards out of the window and onto the dusty floor. Yet even before he hit the ground, another noise drew her focus- something that sounded like breathing into a wet tube.

Before the liquid poison hit her, she had tried to serve in time to see and dodge the new threat, and now freezing in that posture toppled her as fast as Lon. All at once, her arms, legs, and lips were as pliable as rubber.

Descending from his perch, Gran Lassau hit the floor and studied his prey in delight. Asajj's eyes lacked the nerve control to even widen in shock, but he sensed it all the same.

For Gran Lassau's hood had fallen backwards, blown by the wind of his jump. The alien was tall- his thin head bore a slashed mouth with ill-kept teeth, and two asymmetrical eyes, the right eye- the one that had always reflected every ray of light that fell upon it- was still _closing_.

His lone real eye narrowed, looming over the paralyzed Ventress. "It's called a Plaeryin Bol", he mocked. "You implant it in your eye socket. It spits venom when I tighten it, and… well, I'm sure you're feeling the results right now."

A new shock hit Ventress' heart, and she thought it would burst with help from the poison. She had been unable to detect anything from this new attacker, despite having her Force-sense extended in all directions. She had felt nothing from this one. An empty space where a life should be.

_This _was the face of the enemy. _This _was an agent of the threat Zurxix had bid her warn the galaxy about. _This_ was the ultimate enemy of creatures that drew upon the Force…

"Know… you…", she managed to whisper weakly, quivering as she felt the poison shut down all feeling in her lower body.

"I doubt that", the hoodless alien replied chillingly. "I am Nom Anor. Know my name, for I have killed you."

-

Anakin's explosive entry into the pavilion of the castle's cathedral had kicked considerably more dust and debris than either fighter could have anticipated. It still hung in the air, a dark cloud obscuring anything more than five feet from Vader's face. Undaunted, he slowly prowled through the wreckage, brushing aside sacred altars created to ward off evil spirits and demons.

"Your so-called dynasty is paved with dead innocents", Anakin's voice suddenly echoed from everywhere at once, failing to reveal his location. "Sith have never known true love as we have!"

"Wrong", Vader replied to the dust clouds, remembering his lesson to Asajj, "passion, anger, and glory are the strongest weapons of the Sith. The Jedi teach you calm, they teach you to silence your emotions and become a heartless droid! But these feelings open the way to true power!"

Taking a wild guess, he annihilated another statue with a swift swing, but Anakin Skywalker was nowhere to be found in the debris.

Instead, his voice seemed to come from above. "What about the Jedi? This path will end their history forever, the legacy of _thousands_ of Masters!"

Vader didn't shout back, knowing that his goal was close. After a brief silence, he looked upwards through the cloud to see Anakin standing on an ornate marble pedestal connecting the first and second floors to one another, his saber unlit.

"Yes", he finally agreed soberly. "That is our choice, our turning point. No matter what we decide, a millennia-old legacy of power will end today. But I have seen them both from the inside… and I see more. It is easy to see, just which one is more deserving of continued existence!"

With that, he literally _flew_ at Anakin, crossing the distance between them in the time it took for him to re-ignite his blue saber and block with it. The block became an upwards thrust, directed at the center of Vader's chest. Knocking it aside, he slid his own weapon along Anakin's block towards his neck.

He'd gotten too aggressive, trying to end the duel in a single cumulative stroke. Anakin propelled himself backwards to escape, and, bouncing off the stone pulpit just behind him, came back with a slash aimed at Vader's blade handle, destroying the weapon before it's wielder could react.

But this was not the end of it. Vader stepped forward as his saber disintegrated into scraps of singed metal, directly onto the path of Anakin's saber so that it skewered him on the left side of his gut. This move surprised Anakin so much that drew back involuntarily, staring at the blue beam impaled in the machinery over Vader's chest.

He waited two seconds, then pulled Anakin's blade from the wound. It had only damaged mechanical components, and nothing critical. Once he took another large step forward, Anakin realized that the black cape gliding behind his dark half turned the alcove at the top of the cathedral into a filthy trap- there was no way for him to escape from his own weapon, now turned on him.

"You told me before, that I was a mistake, Skywalker.", Vader spoke, his damaged rebreather sounding like an immortal's heartbeat as he prepared for the killing stroke. "A cosmic accident. Now I return those words to you. _You _were the accident. _You _were the mistake. You, phantom, never should have been… and now, I correct that!"

Finally, raising the burning blue blade, he slashed it into Skywalker's head, dissipating it along with the mist that had shrouded the altar, only now allowing the sunlight to enter.

-

Vader did not have to search far to find Asajj Ventress. Her consciousness remained a flickering candle in the Force, ever dimming, but still there.

The sight that met his eyes brought echoes of Mustafar back to his heart once again. Asajj Ventress, splayed down on the floor, without the tiniest bit of the guise of raw fury and anger she had always worn wherever she went. The time for blindly raging at Nom Anor had long since passed, and now he sensed that her mind was in a sedated state for the most part.

"Ventress", he said, "can you hear me?"

"S-S-Sky…", she coughed, "Skywalker?"

"No. He is gone. Who you did this to you, Ventress? Was it Lon?"

Asajj shivered, trembling with the effort to speak further with body parts that were dying so quickly. "Not Lon. He's-"

She entered into a raucous coughing fit, and Vader saw what she meant. Lon the Wise had died just a few feet away from flying to his freedom. His body was in even worse shape than Asajj's- severed at the spine, by the look of it.

Regaining some control, Asajj spoke again. "Th-the… alien. Gran Lassau, but… not real… name. It's what Zurxix-"

A bubble that had to be some of the poison popped at the roof of her mouth, and she laughed deliriously at it. "I suppose this… is my fate. One can only die… so many times."

"No", Vader said, remembering Padme. "You were to be my apprentice. Do not allow something as simple as a neurotoxin destroy you! Please."

"-Bile, and rage, given form", she continued, ignoring him, still chuckling weakly while staring straight up at the sky and the stars beyond it. "Haha… T-that was what the damned Jeds called me. I get my reward after all."

Vader grabbed her crumpled body violently, knowing now that she was beyond saving. "Tell me then, Ventress. _Who_ did this to you? What is his real name?"

"It… was…" her mouth kept trying for it, trying to form the name of her murderer, but gave up any attempt to make sounds when the throat would not cooperate. Instead she just sat there, mouth closed, with only her eyes under control.

For a moment, Vader felt pure wonder. Every shield of arrogance, hatred, or sadism that Asajj had developed over her life of violence and death had simply evaporated. What was left behind was only what she had begun life as- a child. A scared, even innocent little girl that could still marvel at the wonders of the universe.

Her time to be angry with the one responsible had long since subsided. But that was merely summer rain to the storm that now boiled in Vader's brain. Once he was certain that all life had deserted her, he shut both eyes with a black glove that refused to stop shaking.

Knowing that another outburst of rage like the one he'd indulged in before would likely destroy the High Castle of Jomark for all time, he slowly picked up the woman's limp body, leaving Lon the Wise's corpse on it's own.

-

Only after traveling some four-hundred light years out of the system did Nom Anor permit himself to truly breathe. Reaffixing his hood to shroud his face in shadow, he stared out at the questionable safety of Hyperspace- another infidel contrivance he had yet to become fully used to- and waited for the last of his hired crew to leave him in peace.

He breathed out again and again, basking in the exhilaration. He had done it. Mission accomplished, and better yet, he had not died in the process. Anyone who might know his real identity was dead.

Finally feeling like he could function normally again, he removed an item from a pouch beneath his robe, placing it on his desk. Even if his hired crew somehow found it, the villip would appear only a gelatinous fruit to them, totally harmless.

_But it can bring harm_, he mused with a small smile. _It can bring harm to **me**, if I deliver bad news. Thank the Gods this is not the case._

The small being woke up after a few minutes, taking on a likeness Nom Anor had seen nearly a hundred times by now, and still could not look squarely in the eye- Kruu Anor, supreme head of his people's recon efforts. Every last one of his people in this galaxy answered to the massive, tattooed face before him, leaving it up to him and the Gods to coordinate what must be done next.

He also happened to be Nom Anor's own father.

"Report", Kruu rumbled in passable basic, easily avoiding any tone of sentimentality with him. "What is the status of your operation?"

Nom Anor permitted himself a toothy smile, and raised the data pad close enough for the villip to sense and display it. "A complete success. The Forgotten are all dead, but not before they gave me my pay- access to Kahl Gonak's network of smuggling contacts, along with enough of a fortune to recruit some of our own spies on infidel worlds."

Kruu's left eyebrow arched curiously, a trait he had actually developed by spending two years in disguise among the infidels. "All dead? Not by your hand, obviously."

The younger Anor refused to rise to the bait. He knew perfectly well how little his own father trusted in his abilities. "No, by the hand of the Emperor. He sent two of his lackeys to defeat the Forgotten."

Kruu Anor drew closer still to his own villip, causing his face to grow a dimension larger. "You were _seen_ by these assassins?"

"No", he lied smoothly. "Actually, one of them did see my face, but I silenced her. There's no way the Emperor could know who I really am. My life in payment if I am wrong, _father_."

Kruu Anor sniffed, drawing back. "That would be unfair exchange. If he learns of one of us, he can easily find others. All the same, the Forgotten coup has failed despite our aid. This galaxy belongs to the Empire now, and we will simply have to deal with that. Meet with agent Yomin Carr at the _Cha-Harla _safe house, he will transmit the data to me and Warmaster Czulkang Lah."

Just like that, the villip everted to its original state. Either Kruu Anor was extremely busy in his intelligence-gathering efforts, or- far more likely- he had chosen to snub his youngest and most inexperienced field agent.

Nom Anor slammed the data pad down on his desk, for a moment not caring if he broke it. _He is right about one thing- I need practice. _He wasn't forgetting for a microsecond how much information Lon the Wise had deduced about his true masters simply by observing Nom Anor's habits in his disguise as Gran Lassau. Just as well that that little imp was dead now.

A faint tingling sensation in his right eyelash told him that his Plaeryin Bol venom was spent after just two sprays- he would have to find the appropriate creature to refill it once he got to the safe house. Perhaps a few dozen more successful missions after that, he would earn from his father the respect he had already achieved among infidel crewers.

After all, his people had very _long_ lifespans. For the moment, he had nothing but time and experience to look forward to.

-

Somehow, it did not surprise Vader in the least that Captain Veers had received a demand for contact the moment he returned to the _Devastator_. Even though he expected it, the idea of direct holographic contact with the Emperor now turned his insides to ice.

So even at the risk of displeasing him, he waited a few minutes to prepare for it, to conceal a great deal of what he had learned and experienced on Jomark behind an iron wall of mental concentration. If he let the slightest hint of hostility slip through, the penalty would be instant death. His inner thoughts were as concealed and well protected as they could possibly be, even though the Emperor was still hundreds of lightyears away.

Finally, he bent over and switched the round dais on himself, generating the hologram of the man he knew now to be Darth Sidious, the first, and only remaining, son of Korriban.

"What is thy bidding, my master?" _How did you know exactly when I had finished my task?_

The Emperor's face revealed nothing but a note of satisfaction so far. "You have already done it. You have done well, Lord Vader, slaying the Forgotten quickly as you did. My full power is restored. All is at peace."

_Peace is a lie. There is only- _"Yes. Kahl Gonak, Reyne A'kla, Zurxix Azur, and Lon the Wise are now all dead. Trasshk has been driven into total insanity. He will not trouble us again." _Five fewer players at the table, just as you wanted. No… **six**._

The wrinkled face contorted. Had he picked up on that last thought? "At the same time, I confess myself disappointed, Lord Vader. Much has reached my ears regarding your exploits."

_Yeah, I bet it did. _"I assure you, I did not expect the Camaasi woman to-"

"Be silent", Palpatine said. "That is not it. My spies tell me strange tales. I know that you happened to run afoul of another woman in your travels, the Confederate assassin Asajj Ventress- an enemy of our Empire."

_**Our** empire. You say it as though it's rulership was shared. _"She said she was hired by an anonymous employer, master. After I defeated the reptile Trasshk, she begged to partake of our knowledge." _And I wouldn't be surprised if you were her employer._

"Why did you not kill her then?"

_Because… _"Master, I confess that I saw her as potential to continue the cycle of the Sith. We will not live forever, and she could carry on-"

"_And_ you thought to break the rule of two", the old man interrupted him sternly, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. "Unless of course, you sought to remove _me_."

"Of course not, my master." _I hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you._

The Emperor's eyes widened, still searching for the truth. "Perhaps you have developed an interest besides power then, hm?"

It took him a moment to figure out what he meant by that. The answer, as well as the mention of possibilities untold, shocked him. "Of course not. You know I carry a torch only for Padme. I never dreamed of any kind of interaction with her besides that of a mentor to their student." _And regardless of what I think and say, you would never allow me to keep her anyway. You would make sure she died._

"Then I am… satisfied. A pity you had to lose her."

_Are you talking about Padme or Ventress? Doesn't matter- you arranged both of their deaths. _"Yes. A pity. Shall I return to the capital?"

"No", the Emperor replied. "You may now consider the Devastator your own personal ship. Consider it a gift. I wish for you to travel to the Unknown Regions. Evidently, some of the local species there consider themselves exempt from the Empire's laws. You will correct this by any means necessary."

_Another world to crush then. _"As you will, my master."

He didn't smile, but sank back under his violet-hemmed robes, once again confident that all was right with his galaxy. "Of that, I have no doubt."

THE END

-

M: Well, there you have it. Last chapter done! I'd like to thank all the reviewers I've seen so far, along (hopefully)with all those to come, especially Raven Nolan and Count Boobu! Thanks to you, I finally have a story with more reviews than Chapters, something everyone else seems to get easily.If I get enough, I may even submit this to the Distant Star (professional fanfic site). A couple of personal remarks follows.

Writing this last chapter in particular has made me realize that writing a _good_ lightsaber fight is hard. Writing a good lightsaber fight _with good dialogue_ is even harder. Anakin versus Vader was by far the hardest part of this conclusion to write. I would _really _like to know if Anakin and Vader's dialogue sounded epic or totally corny when they fought in and atop the Jomark cathedral. Then again, compared to Episode 2 Anakin (the one that was killed again here!), anything I write sounds like Pathos ;).

Not having read the 'Obsession' miniseries, I was never completely sure of how sympathetic I could make Ventress. Make no mistake, she was meant to remain a PMSwarrior until the end, and was certainly planning eventual betrayal like all good (bad) Sith. Still, Nolan tells me that I wrote her and Vader well. Just wish I could have kept some of the Forgotten alive for use in someone else's work.

As for good old treacherous Nom Anor aka Gran Lassau, I am not completely nuts about him like some fans of NJO (read: the novel reviews), but he does amuse me. One thing I made sure to do was show a bit more of his vulnerable side, since he is nearly fifty years younger than he is when we first see him in Vector Prime. Didn't have much room to characterize Kruu Anor, but he is basically in the same position Nom eventually claims, only he takes it far more seriously. One thing that turned out impossible to do was hide what Nom Anor really was after Zurxix's vision. Though I made sure never to mention their name, his people have such distinctive characteristics that it is easy to tell. Hopefully, I was able to conceal the _who _until the last chapter.

-

Anyways, adieu for now, I will be doing the reviewer-summoning dance and playing Kingdom Hearts 2 until the end of April, sometimes simultaneously!


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